If anything else is still out of date please let me know
In a different topic the subject of one-chance damage across the cast was brought up and I decided it’d be useful to have a chart comparing the one-chance damage for the whole cast. I’ve updated it to have colors that are much less painful to look at:
So, the interesting stuff:
For many (most?) characters, damage ender at level 2 is probably never going to be worth using. It’s almost always only a few percent more than going for hard knockdown ender/exchange ender/launcher ender into knockdown/flipout; for some characters launcher ender into sweep actually catches up in damage or even outdamages the damage ender. For sadira (and possibly others) damage ender is never worth using unless you know that it will kill and another ender won’t. It simply adds too little damage at all levels to be worth using over exchange ender.
The “shadow ender instead of shadow opener” club: riptor, blade aria, eyedol.
A good handful of characters use starters for their optimal one-chance damage that may be worse if you want to have the threat of a normal combo extension. Notable examples: blade aria, eyedol, maya in instinct (high KV juggles,) riptor (damage scaling.)
The health swing for jago’s no-cashout combo in instinct is significantly better than doing a regular combo; if you include the healing it’s about 5% more. His 2-bar one-chance cashout actually never outpaces the combined damage and healing of the no-chance healing combo, regardless of screen position; the corner version even lets him go for a flipout.
Glacius can reliably connect crouch MK xx shadow hail as an opener, meaning his pathetic shadow shoulder opener isn’t such a problem for him–he just has to use a cold shoulder manual to make sure all the hits connect. The real problem: Glacius has the same bug sadira had last patch, meaning his projectile shadow opener causes the breaker rules to…well, break. After shadow hail, doing a manual is unbreakable, meaning he gets to do normal-shadow-normal-linker as his one-chance, and if he has two bars he can do normal-shadow-shadow-normal-linker–in an optimal scenario, this gets him to level 4.
Sadira’s instinct one-chance uses close HK xx shadow widow’s bite, then loops medium widow’s bite+web 3 times, then ends with a manual into ender; for light and medium she does recluse manual and for heavy she does a normal.
Fulgore’s damage on an optimal one-chance is higher than I expected, but I guess that makes sense since his access to meter is so limited. He’s still a low damage character overall. His full bar combo is extremely damaging, but honestly if you’re going to blow 10 pips on a combo it’s probably better to just go for hype beam.
Maya’s non-instinct dagger juggle one-chance can outdamage her normal one-chance by a few percent, but the optimal juggle’s very awkward and the knockdown situation is worse so I didn’t list it. On the other hand, her instinct juggle is simpler and it significantly outdamages her normal one-chance damage, and if you plan on doing a one-chance combo it’s almost certainly the better option. What I’m wondering is this: just how reactable is leap kick? Light leap kick, at least, has a very large break window, so I imagine you could react to that…but I’m not so sure about the other two, which makes me unsure of their practicality when used at a breakable point in a combo.
Riptor gets a lot of damage up front, and she does pretty damn well meterless due to her flame breath chain. This is even more pronounced in instinct; the chain gets her to level 2 ender before she’s even done anything breakable, and shadow clever girl ender nets her a lot of damage AND a mixup.
Aganos’s damage buffs are rock solid; his non-carry one-chance combo outdamages most characters’ one-chance into damage ender, while giving him a hard knockdown. Even his carry version is still more than a good handful of characters can get. Walls bring up his damage considerably but they’re not his only use of chunks for damage. When used after normals each light/medium rock represents about half a shadow pulverize’s worth of PD; with 2 chunks you can get up to about the same damage as his one chance for 1 bar, and with 4 chunks you can actually get to level 3 and cash out for ~47%.
Cinder’s one-chance damage post-nerf is much more reasonable! Happy times.
With the nerf to stagger ender tusk now has a more meaningful choice to make with regard to enders; where before, his best option was almost certainly stagger > manual > HKD ender, now he essentially chooses between HKD for a chance for a setup or skewer, damage for guaranteed damage, or stagger for a throw mixup.
Arbiter DEFINITELY wants to use damage ender at lower levels. His is one of the strongest in the game, significantly outdamaging his HKD ender while still giving him access to his vortex. If he’s willing to blow almost all his resources, his one-chance using gun loop is absurdly high, with the highest up front damage of the entire cast aside from jago (including the healing.) This combo is almost completely unchanged from last patch, simply requiring a different rhythm to the shots as they’re being spend in 3-shot bursts instead of 2-shots.
Despite its appearance I’m pretty sure mira’s HK trephine is not actually reaction-breakable. If it is then I’ll change the chart but it seems like it actually has a pretty short break window and would require a very fast reaction. Point is, any version of trephine pushes the combo up to level 3, which gives her a very substantial one-chance cashout. With instinct, she likely wants to give the opponent more chances, as the small extra time with an extension can push her up to a level 4 ender.
Raam. My darling. The damage for the kryll combos assume that kryll is active for the entire combo, which is likely not how it will play out in a real match. The nice thing about kryll, though, is that if it runs out mid-combo, that just means that that damage ticked down anyway outside of the combo. His instinct damage is a bit lower than before, but if you give the opponent a few more chances you can still cash out for an insane reward.
Eyedol has some of the most unusual stuff going on in his one-chance combos. In warrior mode, his best use for meter in a one-chance is shadow ender, as he gets more damage than from shadow opener and gets a ground bounce. In mage body, he has no good use for meter. Shadow stomp is less than his meterless combo and shadow lightning doesn’t open a combo. In instinct his damage jumps up dramatically, because shadow club slam adds a huge amount of up front and potential damage, and launcher ender is very strong at low levels.
Very interesting breakdown. I figured Cinder’s would be OD - shadow fission as an opener does a TON of damage. I’m super against how damaging it is, especially considering that it’s hit confirmable off a 3 piece target combo.
Actually, I’m against all shadows not being breakable after long target combos (*coughWulftargetcombointoshadowraggededgecough *). I think target combo individual hits should always count against the three hit rule - Sadira’s target combo into juggle hit is always breakable, after all (though I suppose that might be due to a separate juggle=manual rule or something). I don’t like that certain characters’ TC’s only count as a single “hit”, even though they’ve got 2 or 3 individual strikes before they have to confirm into anything more substantial.
I’m not against it, as I assume the point is for some characters to have more hit confirm options than others. However, I totally agree on the cinder point–it’s bad enough his damage is that high, but for it to also be hit confirmable? I think he needs to chill out.
More interesting riptor stuff: for a one-chance combo, her flame breath chain opener is by far her best option, raising the ender level quite well on its own so she can save shadow meter for the big cashout on shadow clever girl. However, if you plan on doing a longer combo, it may not be the best option, as it substantially raises damage scaling.
A note on maya: you may have to adjust your dagger juggle route to be slightly less damaging in order to have a truly ambiguous break point. Her most damaging dagger juggles will leave the opponent in a situation where going for a light at the break point will cause the combo to blow out.
Edit: different route listed now, more difficult to execute but doesn’t need adjusting.
Cinder also has 3 options to end 3rd degree with, and being wrong would generate a super early lockout for him to punish. A better example of the hole in my idea would be Wulf, whose TC is deterministic and always ends with the same button.
Really my beef is mostly with Cinder at this point - I used to have a problem with Wulf, but given his overall damage nerf I think having a safe-ish way to confirm into good damage on a combo isn’t too bad. Cinder’s upfront damage on 3rd degree->shadow fission is just silly though, especially since some versions of the chain aren’t shadow counterable either.
The potential to break TC->opener though isn’t really a compelling argument to me against making individual strikes “count”. If Orchid does cr.LK->cr.LK->slide, the slide becomes breakable. In practice though, that’s a pretty hard window to hit, and there’s opener variability (of the unreactable kind) that’s added on top of that. As a break situation, that favors the offense pretty strongly, especially given that you’ve got extra time after an opener to confirm your lockout. And if you can punish something with MP->HP->opener, then you can also punish with MP->opener.
As I said, my specific issue is more with Cinder than anything, but I don’t think TC hits counting would be that significant of a nerf to most of the cast who have them. For someone like Wulf maybe an exception could be made or something (or give him other options to end his magic series), but I actually doubt most of the rest of the cast would even notice.
He would have this regardless of whether or not his target combo was breakable. Overpower can be late cancel confirmed into specials.
If you were to make target combos/chains into specials breakable I’d say it would only be fair to reduce the KV built. Short-short-special builds huge KV, I assume because it’s a safe, fast confirm, but if the special’s going to be breakable I don’t think it’s good for that to leave you with so little time on your combo.
I honestly believe making wulf’s (and any target combo with no actual ending variations) breakable would make them that much worse when they don’t need to be.
They could however make it so target combos with variations, such as cinder’s, counted each separate hit as one hit for the breakable chains rule, and so it would therefore become breakable. That’s something I’d be on board with.
The thing about Cinder’s target combos is that actually confirming into shadow fission requires Cinder to be basically at point blank range. He has to end his target combo with the LP, which really only hits right in front of him, and since none of the variations of the first and seconds hits of the target combo step him forward, he has to be super close to the opponent for that to connect.
Most -5 moves (which the fastest Cinder can punish obviously) have more than enough pushback to put him out of that punish range. The only way Cinder is punishing you with it is if he’s punishing most reversals or if you dash right in his face for some reason. In those cases, I feel like you kind of deserve getting hit with a hard punish.
Also, the last hit of third degree is always shadow counterable.
I’ve actually never had an issue with not being able to break the TC’s themselves - it’s more that it’s always just felt like the shadow follow-up should be breakable I guess. It’s not a huge issue by any means, but it is something I wish was a bit different.
This really only rears its head (to me anyway) as a legit problem on Cinder, due to the silly damage that raw shadow fission does. Taking into account that an HP->HP->LP 3rd degree isn’t terribly common in neutral, I still find it a bit “off” that a character as generally low-damage as Cinder gets 20+% unbreakable damage off a target combo opener if he has a bar.
@SonicDolphin117 - I think you’re short-changing the degree to which Cinder gets to play at point-blank range. If he sticks you with a pyre bomb or throws you, it is not at all uncommon for him to get to apply super close range pressure in that manner. Once you’re stuck and he’s on top of you, then you get to play the throw/counter hit LP game, and if you guess wrong on the tech and he 3rd degrees, you’re eating 20+% unbreakable. It’s really not all that rare.
Give me time to set up 4 walls with my Aganos, and I can take out your entire life-bar with a no-chance break combo, using shadow ruin, in under a second.
Sorry if I’m being daft, but what are you using as the opener for ARIA’s combos?
I guess the ender is shotgun blitz for all bodies except blade body which uses allegro.
Thanks
Any of her fierces xx shadow shotgun knee. However I realize I was actually wrong on booster/blade body, she can actually get more using her target combo starter.
I think what I need to know for the chart to be really accurate is just how reaction-breakable certain moves are. The two I’ve got on my mind are mira’s heavy trephine and maya’s leap kick–both represent a pretty significant damage increase in combos. Heavy trephine has the more obvious animation but a small break window, while leap kick is more subtle (based on the angle) but has a longer break window. For now I’m going to put the numbers in assuming those moves aren’t reaction-breakable.
Not the linker version, just a manual regular heavy trephine. I thought it would be easy to react to the animation and break but it actually seems to be pretty tough. Problem is trying to test “reactions” to something you know is coming…if only I could set the dummy to play back random recordings T_T
There are things that a human can react to and things that they can’t. Average human reaction time to purely random visual input (e.g. a light turning on/off at random intervals) is 15-16 frames iirc.
Ah. The “opener but not really” version of trephine isn’t really reactable unless you’re specifically looking for that little flip at the end to react to (which means either the light or medium versions would pass you by). I’d guess it gets broken like any manual - doable, but mostly as a guess.
In what situation would a trephine like that come from though to calculate 1-chance damage? Pretty sure Mira’s best one chance damage would come from HP->shadow trephine->manual->reaping. The only time trephine gets that unreactable “opener but not really” version is if you do it off shadow bats, which isn’t really how you want to start a combo if you’re going for raw damage (vampire mist shenanigans notwithstanding).
Shadow trephine is less damage than heavy trephine xx shadow bats, light bats. In general except to punish fireballs shadow trephine is a complete waste of meter imo. It’s worse for one-chance damage, and in lockouts her linkers are better options–reaping if she has health to spare, bite into shadow bite ender if she needs to recover. Same goes for her shadow damage ender, you’re just throwing that meter away outside of corner bat juggles.
Using stand HP xx heavy trephine xx shadow bats, light bats, any trephine, mira pushes the combo to level 3, so the lowest damage version of that is 41%.
