A lot of people are probably going to take this the wrong way and call it just another random LCD B*itching thread, but in all honestly this is what everyone should be doing to ensure the best possible experience for Season 3. Season 2 is over and will be sitting for some time until March when S3 starts; the devs crave for our feedback and want to know what we like and what we don’t like; they compile all that information and decide whats best going forward. In this thread I have compiled my entire Season 2 review talking about each character and what I’d like to see and what I wouldn’t like to see for the future in season 3 and now is a great time to do that. This all assuming there will be another early access or character tuning pass just like they did going from S1 to S2.
WARNING | This is a highly opinionated thread and most if not all people will read and believe something differently. Everything stated is based of 2 years experience playing the game as well as also playing multiple characters at high level. Some characters will be harder to discuss simply due to the nature of not playing everyone in the game, those will be based on personal match-up experience.
SUMMARY I would consider Jago to be one of the most balanced characters in the game. He has all the tools and you would think he doesn’t have any weaknesses but he does as well as bad match-ups. His damage output is very good and has great normals and frame traps. His instinct maintains its spot as one of the best in the game being able to generate upwards of 30% health or more with an added bonus of generating more than two instincts a game as a result. His weaknesses lye in his walk speed and ability to deal with very mobile characters like Maya or Cinder as well get in on zoners such as Aria.
SEASON 3 | There really isn’t anything I would change about Jago, he comes off as really soild and great for anyone at high level and beginners; however I am worried about the longevity of the character after Shadow Jago comes out. Shadow Jago will have a teleport, a divekick, air fireballs, standing overhead, slides…and Ultimate!!! What will there be left for regular Jago to stand himself apart from Shadow Jago? Just like everyone switch to Evil Ryu in SF4 everyone will forget about regular Jago in KI. Is lack of a Laser Sword, and health regain really enough? I propose to giving the people what they want and bring back Season 1 manuals for jago while hes in instinct instead of the frame advantage. The ultimatum is that you either go for health or be ridiculously hard to break. While on the subject I do feel Jago is probably a little too predictable in season 2. Giving him back those manuals would spice it up for him a bit.
(Shadow Jago isn’t out as of the date this was written so maybe there is something I’m missing IG hasn’t told us yet)
SUMMARY | Wulf was considered to be one of the more crazy characters in S1, and after all the major changes to the character in season 2 the consensus is still that he is a top tier character. Sabrewulf succeeds by having amazing normals, frame traps, pressure, and damage. It’s hard to talk about Sabrewulf and not mention the best instinct in the game with Feral Cancels. During Instinct he kind of becomes like Sadira in the sense that he is very hard to block and has an almost guaranteed chance to open his opponent up and get damage. He not only has feral cancels but is very hard to break with his 1-hit medium and 2-hit heavy kick linkers. His weaknesses include struggling to get in against zoners like Glacius and Kan-Ra as well as having to rely on unsafe specials and dashes to open his opponents up.
SEASON 3 | As I’ve said many times I feel Sabrewulf is in a good place right now and there is little I would change. I do feel his damage output is a little high in instinct and with such a powerful instinct already with FC he does not need the damage and chip buff any longer that is currently in place. Also as noted up above about his ability to get high level 4 damage a lot quicker than the rest of the cast because of his 2-hit heavy kick linkers as apposed to 3 hits. This allows him to get away with much more damage because of his level of break-ability. Not sure what the communication with Double Helix and Iron Galaxy was but if I recall it was not their intent for Wulf to have such inconsistent linkers from the rest of the cast (but I could be wrong). His combo trait is already rabid doubles so perhaps this should be looked into further for Season 3. Wulfs always avoid his punch linkers for this very reason that he becomes easier to break.
SUMMARY | There has never been any real agreement between the KI community of where Glacius places on the tier list. Some say he is terrible some say he is amazing and is heavily down-played. I’m in the middle in that I agree he has some amazing tools and potential that no one is utilizing; whether this is because the ceiling on the character is too high or if he truly sucks has yet to be determined. Glacius flourishes in his abilities to zone, deal amazing damage and deal with very mobile characters using hail and liquidize; let’s not also forget about the setup potential. He suffers in his own mobility though not having a forward or back dash and being very easy to break.
SEASON 3 | I don’t really have an opinion on Glacius not having a forward or backdash however I do feel his instinct is very outdated. One hit of armor every couple of seconds was fine for a while but with the new design philosophy in Season 2 and going forward there are just so many things that beat it it’s almost as if he doesn’t even have armor in instinct anymore; not to mention characters like Thunder, Riptor, Aganos and TJ who can use armored moves very regularly with little to no resource costs. This was the problem Wulf had in Season 1 where a straight damage buff didn’t really bring any comeback factor and neither does ice armor. Another great suggestion was to give him ranged manuals. I’m not sure how that would work but Glacius has so many tools already that I’m not sure what he really needs or doesn’t need anymore. Perhaps there is just no great Glacius player who can fully flesh him out however I do feel Rimz has tried and is probably the best. Perhaps Kan-Ra is just better at doing what Glacius is suppose to do.
SUMMARY | Thunder arguably is probably the most underrated character in the game right now. Thunder is great at always making his opponents feel scared all the time with his 0 frame command grabs and 50/50 cross-up/DP mix-ups. His damage is some of the best in the game and handles heavy rush down and projectile characters very well like Maya and Sadira. Like Sabrewulf though he suffers in match-ups that involve zoning and distance from that of characters like Kan-Ra, Fulgore and Glacius. He also lacks the ability to get off the ground without meter.
SEASON 3 | I’ve always kind of felt like Thunder’s command grabs recovered a bit too quickly and can sometimes be very hard to punish in time. Doesn’t seem like there is enough risk with having a 0 frame command grab with ridiculous range and high unbreakable damage. Sure he can be considered a grappler but really hes a hybrid who can do a lot more. Call of Sky has been in much debate over the months some saying the old version was useless some saying it was better and even some liking the new utility dash buff. It’s alright but I feel it could better. I actually wouldn’t mind if Thunder was given a recapture off his Skyfall ability after Sammamish.
SUMMARY | Sadira was one of the best characters in Season 1 for multiple reasons and going into Season 2 she kind of received the Wulf treatment where people thought she was terrible but reality showed her to be the complete opposite. Sadira excels in air combat and being able to do long fancy combos that are very hard to break. She controls the air by controlling her opponents by throwing Kunai and is no longer free on wake-up by using Shadow Web Cling. She has great normals, one of the best instincts in the game, and few bad match-ups with one of them being KanRa.
SEASON 3 | The evolution of Sadira has kind of turned her into a juggle character as apposed to just being a spider with a double jump in season 1. I’d like to see her sent more in that direction perhaps introducing air-doubles just for her. Combining that with the ability to build less KV than the rest of the cast. Her cross-up is a very unique play style for her and I don’t want to see that get changed. Shadow Web cling was a reversal added to her in early access of Season 2 and I still think it could use some tweaking. It’s a really terrible feeling to waste a whole bar of shadow meter trying to get away from character vortexes just to get Option Selected by characters like Thunder Orchid who can knock her out of it every time; especially when meter is so valuable for cashing out juggles.
SUMMARY | Throughout all of Season 1 and later in Season 2 Orchid has always been a little less than good and as of right now I would classify Orchid as mid-tier. Orchid is great at dealing high damage quickly, being relatively hard to break, and has very strong footsie tools and normals. Her preassure game becomes some of the best when she is in instinct. With the addition of the grenade in season 2 and some other minor changes she can make herself safe in some more scenarios. While these additions to her helped, the core problem still remains is that if you know how to block Orchid she is probably going to lose. I also feel she struggles against characters with high mobility and zoning.
SEASON 3 | I’d like to see Orchid evolve a little bit just as some of the other Season 1 characters did for season 2. I’m not sure what this would be but I’d love to see Orchid receive something that would allow her to deal with high mobility a little bit more as she seems to struggles against characters like Maya and Kan-Ra especially others that don’t have to play footsies or a neutral game along with her. A good quality of life change for her would be to fix the always having to do a heavy auto double after sending out fire cat to make yourself safe. We always see this where Orchid players try to make her safe by sending out a fire cat thinking the opponent will block but don’t so she gets the confirm with a heavy auto double they either let it or rock or counter break. This applies to Sadira players as well.
SUMMARY | Has always been a very good character and anyone who would argue that probably hasn’t played KI for very long. Spinal heavily excels in the pressure and vortex game. Where he lacks in normals and a wake-up he makes up for in other areas like high damage and hard to block setups.
SEASON 3 | The original design intent of spinal was to be an okay character without skulls and a very good character with skulls. Some might say (including myself) that perhaps he has skulls pretty much all the time outside of the start of a match. I feel he just needs to build less skulls overall but to compensate should receive a new way to open someone up. A major resource such as skulls shouldn’t just be something he always has, he should feel really good when he has them but shouldn’t feel helpless without them especially in the neutral game.
SUMMARY | What can we say about Fulgore? Just won evo, has all the tools available to him to seem amazing and has few bad matchups if any at all. I will say he is pretty difficult to play.
SEASON 3 | Unless IG is planning on adding new mechanics to the game I feel Fuglore should probably just be left alone; he basically near-perfect. If any changes at all I’d like to see Fulgore start will full pips and spin speed when he activates instinct but as instinct runs out his spin speed slows down.
SUMMARY | Turns out this is a character no one cares about anymore. He was always the most talked about character in Season 2 but after so many adjustments people seem to think hes bad. I personally think he’s still pretty darn good. TJ Combo suffers from extremely unsafe specials that can be made safe by spending meter and not having any kind of “real” wake-up tools; he may also have some of the worst normals in the game. He excels in being able to close distance quickly, rolling through projectiles and dealing large amounts of damage during lock-outs.
SEASON 3 | I see TJ as being in a pretty good spot right now. I’d like to see him play a little less gimmicky like doing wake up tremor for example and perhaps remove the armor on power line. The move is way to quick and fast traveling to really need it not to mention the safe counter break he can still get off of it. Another option is to make it more negative so people can punish it on block but keep the armor. Being able to travel full screen for basically free is kind of silly.
SUMMARY | Maya is one of those weird characters that seems very powerful but inherently suffers from many weaknesses that people don’t capitalize on. She’s similar to Kan-Ra in that you can abuse her on wake-up and in the corner. She is one of two characters in the game that lose moves as she loses daggers/bodies(Aria) as well as having the worst shadow counter in the game thus making her even easier to pressure. Her strengths rely in having amazing mobility and the ability to build dagger pips which lead to unbreakable and unblockable easy damage. She has greet normals which allow her to whiff punish easily. I believe Maya is a good character but could easily benefit by receiving a few tweaks on both sides of the spectrum. Does having a dagger pip system really outweigh everything else she lacks?
SEASON 3 | My first legit question to start would be to ask if Maya’s Shadow Counter was originally designed to be so bad. If her Tumble kick shadow linker stays in I would definitely like to see the startup time decreased a little bit. I’ve heard a lot of great things about Maya and a lot of bad things and one of those bad things about her is the dagger pips being built too easily. I would have to agree with the people and say that dagger pips use to be hard to get but how the game has evolved it’s very easy to get them now. I quite honestly would like to see the dagger mechanic just removed entirely and just give her a traditional damage ender. I’m not of fan of having to do 3x as many combos because my linkers and auto doubles are super slow and can easily broken and forcing us into building level 4 pips to keep up on damage. I’m kind of torn on her DP; this in the sense that I’m not sure if it’s completely useless or should it stay the way it is now. Give her a tradition DP when she has light dagger? IDK you guys decide.
SUMMARY | Easily was the most broken character released in Season 2 but just no one truly knew until it was too late and the nerfs started to pour in. Kan-Ra does what Kan-Ra does and that includes being amazing at pestering you to death with scarabs and command grabs. Surprisingly he also does pretty good damage not just from command grabs but from the new scarab setups players have come up with lately. His weakness is not being able to get off his back without a real reversal without sand; you can abuse him as much as you want in the corner as well and lacks any good normals outside of CR.LP.
SEASON 3 | Easily one of the most talked about characters to date and surely could use some more going into S3. I’d personally like to see Kan-Ra more fine tuned going into the next season meaning try to really figure out how to take away some of his unbreakable setups or super high damage 1-chance breaks. A character with such mobility and pressure should not be able to get as much free damage has he currently does. For example super jump off sand into overhead > Shadow Scarab > Recapture > heavy manual (1chance) = instant level 4 ender. Perhaps the abilities that generate sand for him could be looked at as well examining if he should always have it as much as he does. Similar to spinal in that he needs sand for everything yet he always has it.
SUMMARY | Riptor suffers from low natural damage output and because of that has to rely on gimmicks and resets which is where her strengths lye tied along with really great mobility and armored moves for pressure. She has some of the better normals similar to Wulf and has great anti-airs with clever girl and shadow tail flip.
SEASON 3 | For me I think Riptor is just a tad bit on weaker side in terms of actual damage output. While I agree that her tail flips are 100% reactable to, they are tad bit to quick in most scenarios. The player should not have to mash jab in combos or DP in fear or being reset by tail flip. Even if you know your opponent is going to do it you still have to guess which side. I’d like to see these slowed down just a tad and to compensate just give her a slight damage increase to bring her more in line with the rest of the cast. Flame carpet also should probably be looked at in terms of it’s actual uses because as of right now there is no real purpose to do it when all she has to do is meaty with the armored headbutt. Being able to jump out of it or back dash in some scenarios just questions the move a bit too much.
SUMMARY | Omen is a bonus character who is the herald of Gargos and a shadow of Jago. I consider Omen to be a fireball mix-up character who relies on heavy pressure and meter to get the job done. He has great mobility being able to air dash and use an invincible teleport at the cost of meter. His pressure game is amazing and has one of the most devastating moves in the game that causes 100% potential damage. His weaknesses lye in his low damage output and suffering from randomness he can’t control. He also has extremely easy to break auto doubles and unsafe wake-ups.
SEASON 3 | Knowing that Omen is a bonus character I don’t really think he will see that much attention going into season 3. I could be completely wrong but I think Omen is just a very under played character due to his high ceiling and randomness. I think that the number of his potential fireballs (12) should be reduced to allow players to better control the circumstance after a fireball comes out. The meter lock-out mechanic is very interesting but very under utilized as well. I think it’s better suited to last for the entirety of his instinct rather than on a pre-determined timer. It takes a while for Omen to get going and having 1 meter locked out for a couple of seconds doesn’t really do much for him. I don’t know too much about the character so it’s hard to speak about him but other than the things I’ve already mentioned he could probably also use an animation cleanup as well. While I know he was made on a very short time table, him sharing some of Jago’s animations is understandable because of cannon but him using ragged edge from Wulf is not.
SUMMARY | I have always been a fan of Aganos and I hate to see this character struggle. He was arguably the worst character in the game when he first came out and received a few changes to help him but still sees very little play and still struggles in quite a few match ups. His strengths rely in great normals and buttons to keep opponents out; and as much as people hate to admit it but I would slightly classify aganos as a zoner. He likes to keep you out so he can get chunks and just poke you to death and when he has the opportunity to do big damage he will. He lacks any real wake-up options or true anti-airs. (Flick is okay)
SEASON 3 | I think with a little bit more help and the right player Aganos could be easily one of the best characters in the game. With chunks he is unstoppable (literally) and without them he is less than bad. I’d like to see more options for Aganos to use on mobile characters like Sadira or Maya who just abuse him outright. He needs a mid-screen threat that people should fear when he doesn’t have chunks. I am in favor of some sort of command grab. The peacemaker is great but without chunks it’s hard for him to get it and doesn’t last for very long. During instinct it’s amazing but after it’s gone Aganos players just feel lost and just spam normal grabs and hard kick until they can chunk up again.
SUMMARY | Here is another character that is really underrated. She is a fan favorite but not a whole lot of people know how to use her properly just yet and take full advantage of her. She suffers from being abused on her wake-up not really being able to do much except try to hold up or block. By this time people know that wake-up parry isn’t really a real option so avoid it. Her walk speed is dreadful and her back dash is basically useless. Her strengths are having some of the best long range buttons in the game paired with her 50/50 mix-up and reset potential with command
grabs and counter hit combos.
SEASON 3 | I don’t really think Sako could benefit from receiving any sort of walk speed but I do feel her wake-up could be addressed simply by just giving her a reasonable back dash. There is just too much start-up on the current one to be really used for anything; she just may as well not even have one like Glacius. I’d also like to see her parry mechanic looked at a bit more adjusting resource costs to do it and cancel into it. Sometimes I feel she can parry just a bit too much without much consequence other than a small recovery window. Counter hit combos are amazing but at a truly high level become very predictable because they are restricted to Heavy and Medium manuals. If you can see where Hisako is on the screen then there is a good change you know what strength manual is going to be and break it.
SUMMARY | Cinder is a very weird character for me because he has so much and does a lot of work for very little. He is a Marvel type character that enjoys keeping you the air doing fancy juggles and confusing you on what the heck he is doing. A lot of his specials are negative and sometimes just can’t keep up in the damage department but overall is a pretty solid character. He has a solid air game and best back dash in the game. When Cinder really gets going he has really great pressure as well.
SEASON 3 | I would definitely like to see Cinder leaned more towards an air game kind of like my suggestions for Sadira earlier. I feel Cinder players put all this work into their juggles which are normally about 15-20 hits but then only cash out for a very small amount. I think trailblazer is a bit too obnoxious to break and should probably be more visibly distinctive between the three versions. Another quality of life change I’d like to see for Cinder’s opponents is to make some of his colors during fired up a little less obnoxious. It really is hard to tell when hes in fired up mode and when hes not especially in the grey color.
SUMMARY | Aria is the true definition of a marvel character with 3 life bars and assist like bodies to aid her every now and then to setup combos. She has some of the best zoning tools in the game and great mobility. Her damage is alright and has great mix-up potential as well. The real setbacks for her are not being able to recover from potential damage and losing many options as the match progresses.
SEASON 3 | I’d like to see Aria’s instinct to be re-examined and see if it’s actually a benefit to her or an outright liability. Is being able to join bodies really worth risking losing all three health bars to a single combo especially against some of the more damaging characters like Jago or Wulf. Other than that I think the character is too new and no where near fleshed out to really tell what she needs or doesn’t need.
SEASON 2 SHADOWS REVIEW
This mode saw a lot of use when first released but now doesn’t really see that much this far into the season. My main issue with the system is that it’s an offline mode only kind of thing and there no support to have real time shadows play each other. It would be amazing to have side tournaments where shadows play each other in an offline/online environment.
I know it will get better over time but in my opinion shadows do not accurately mimic what a real player would do. Most of the time it will just learn 1-setup and continue to use that over and over again instead of mixing it up like I naturally would do. For more difficult characters like Maya it becomes almost impossible to teach the shadow what to do because of the dagger mechanic. If I have 100 matches recorded of me picking up daggers 3 different ways, she will still not know how to get her daggers back and the issue comes up again where she doesn’t have a dagger but still wants to try cross-up set-ups on hard knockdown. Just a few examples of my thoughts.
I am also not of fan of the revenge system where you have to play the Shadow of the player who beat your shadow. This becomes very tedious and is almost impossible to keep up with when you have 50+ people playing your shadow a day. There needs to be some way to optimize this or make it so that my shadow can play other shadows.
SEASON 2 RANKED LEAGUES REVIEW
I think the overall consensus is that ranked leagues are great and especially being able to play 2/3 sets in Killers rank is amazing. The problems with the system come into play when everyone is in Killer Rank and it starts to dilute the purpose of the rank a little bit. I think I speak for everyone when we sometimes come across that player who is in Killers Rank but does nothing but hold up back and mashes buttons. I feel the entry process into Killer rank should be a little harder perhaps adding in a couple new tiers.
In agreement with these people, I have also heard that players really miss the fun factor of the Season 1 ranking system where you were able to get a new custom player card every time you reached a new level. Sort of like badges in Halo or Call of Duty it was really exciting to push on knowing you were going to get a cool new reward at the next level. That is sort of taken away with Ranked leagues because once you reach Killer there is nothing cool left for you to get other than a star at the end of each month which in my personal opinion doesn’t really do much for me. Perhaps in Season 3 we can bring some of the old S1 flavor by introducing some sort of prestige system that allows us to reset our rank back to qualifier or bronze but in exchange we get a cool Icon or badge. For example I really loved in Gears of War 3 that when I reached level 100 I got an amazing looking badge(as my level instead) and if I wanted to I could re-up to start back from 1 again but my level color would change from white to red. May sound silly but people love this stuff and it just keeps them coming back. Knowing that I have to reach rank 32 in Killers and wait until the end of the month to get a star which I may already have is kind of depressing.
Another Idea is to just to bring back the old S1 leveling system entirely but instead of capping at level 40 you can just go on forever.
WHAT I’D LIKE TO SEE IN SEASON 3
I really honestly don’t want to see any new major game mechanics added to the mix in season 3. I think the game is pretty wacky enough as it is; in fact some of the major changes going from S1 to S2 was a turnoff for quite a few people honestly causing them not to return. If there was to be something added with minimal impact that doesn’t really fundamentally change the system, I’d personally like another way to spend meter. I think being able to spend both meters at the same time for an super enhanced version of one of your shadow moves would be great. It would add a cool special effect or unique animation. You could take this even 1 step further which would be to enhance the properties of the move itself aside from just more damage. For example if you used the double meter version of Shadow Leaping Slash it would have more invincibility frames or a bigger hitbox. Just some ideas.
I know there will be new game modes added and really the only one I’d like to see is Tag Team Mode. It would have to be a more forgiving version though meaning instead of tagging in and out mid round you could only tag in after a life bar has been depleted. I don’t know how difficult a mode like this would be to implement but I know it would be amazing for doubles tournaments.
Last but not least I’ve mentioned this before but I definitely would love to see a CG animated intro for the KI. Booting up the game and just seeing “checking downloadable content” is kind of lame. We already have the amazing music so let’s do this!!
There you have it ladies and gentleman. I have laid out my ideas and thoughts going into Season 3 and rest of you should do the same. I’d ike to hear your thoughts on my post however on what you agreed with or disagreed with.
P.S | Scorpion/Johanna for Season 3 !!!
EDIT: Please people don’t turn this thread into trying to protect your characters from the nerf bat. Don’t get offended and feel as If I attacked your character. I wrote this with all bias set aside and said what a really felt about each character. I stated facts as best I could and even hit my characters where they needed to be. If you feel there is something I mentioned you disagreed with please reply here with an intellectual post instead of attacking me and tell me why.