Doesn’t omen have three of them?
Possession is actually an unblockable like shatter rather than a grab so the throw invulnerability added to shadow puddle punch doesn’t apply.
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Omen’s slide is pretty much like breaking Jago’s shadow windkick. If you mash 1,2,3 you will get locked out. Plus Omen only has 2 shadow linkers but has 4 shadow moves all together.
If you ever want to see the exact timing to break shadow linkers, please visit this page: Shadow Linker Break Trainer: The Complete KI Guide
Here’s the timings for the various moves, directly from my page (if you use Chrome, you can practice breaking the shadow linkers in your browser, too!). Square brackets means a lockout gap, a regular number is breakable frames.
Glacius Cold Shoulder: [1] 6 6 6 6 6
Glacius Hail: [7] 5 7 6 3 6
Omen Demon Slide: [3] 8 [3] 8 [3] 8 [3] 8 [3] 8
Omen Furious Flurry: [3] 6 [1] 6 [1] 6 [4] 6 [2] 6
Jago Wind Kick: [5] 6 [7] 6 [7] 6 [7] 6 [7] 6
So you can see Wind Kick has 7 frame gaps between each hit whereas Demon Slide has 3 frame gaps between each hit (and each hit of Demon Slide has 8f to break whereas Wind Kick is just 6f). There are no lockout gaps between any of Glacius’s shadows, as expected.
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That guide is amazing and I know it took a lot of time to come up with.
What’s your opinion on this? I’ve stated before that shadow linkers play an important role in MU charts but lots of people are neglecting them. They all have different properties like lower body invulnerability, frames between them when comes to breaking them , etc but what’s your opinion about IG changing the timing to one of his shadow linkers? Let’s say, shadow hail for example. Like give it more frames in between to make it more or less around the same frames to break it like Orchid’s Flick Flack.
For me personally, shadow hail never gets used. It’s a linker that doesn’t allow the ultra input to always come out directly after it. It even pushes your opponent away sometimes that when you try and manual after it, your opponent is now out of reach.
I know his Shadow Cold Shoulder is one of the best in the games as far as start up frames but being the ONLY character where both your shadow linkers are 1,2,3 mash to break in my opinion hurts him. It’s hard to really play mind games with counter breakers especially online when all you hear is 3 and never the 1,2 since it happens so fast.
Any thoughts?
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Shadow hail not being used as a linker doesn’t bother me at all, because the move has uses in neutral. Lots of characters have shadow linkers they don’t use that much.
IMO Glacius has one of the best shadow linkers in the game (Cold Shoulder) so I don’t think he’s lacking in this department at all.
I also think every single shadow linker in the game is nothing but counter breaker bait when you fight against good players, because there’s not really any such thing as a “hard to break” shadow linker. Orchid’s is probably the closest but it’s very consistently doable even by intermediate players. So I don’t think giving Glacius a “hard to break” shadow linker would help him at all in the sense of a matchup chart (you might beat bad players a bit more often or something, I guess), but what it MIGHT do is change how shadow Hail works in neutral (depending on how the linker is coded), which I think would be probably a bad thing for him.
Also, I think you might be overestimating the amount of shadow linkers in the game that people try to break “1, 2…” and then do nothing. There actually aren’t that many (< 50% of the total number, I would estimate) and Glacius definitely isn’t the only character who doesn’t have such a linker. Most of them are too fast to engage in any real mind game, because you have to assume the opponent is fast enough to react and think through his options in, like, 20 frames or less. He’s probably already decided to counter break or not when he did the linker (maybe he would only counter break if he hears “1” in some cases; I reserve this for good players only). Of course the slower shadow linkers are possible to engage in this mind game, but that’s only about half-ish the cast.
So yeah, my ultimate thought is that only Orchid can use shadow linkers with the intention of locking someone out (and then again, only against beginner/early intermediate players), and that you don’t really gain anything by changing Glacius’s shadow linkers. I would take Glacius’s shadow cold shoulder over almost any other shadow linker in the game.
Yeah, all versions of puddle punch, shadow included I’m pretty sure, are throwable. The timing for each is a little different though, so the only character who can consistently use this against him is really Hisako, since she can just stand next to him and hold possession down. I can’t say that I really bleed for him though to be honest on this - there are characters in the game who get no access to invincible reversals of any kind, and liquidize covers some of the same bases as a backdash in terms of getting away from wakeup pressure. You can get OS’d on backdashes the same way Glacius gets OS’d on liquidize, and liquidize punishes many of the same types of setups that will lose to a simple backdash. I can certainly understand why Glacius players might dislike not having that option, but functionally he winds up in the same place as many other characters in the game. Probably even a bit better, since puddle punch is a pretty decent meterless reversal all things considered. Certainly not the best in the game, but nowhere near the worst either. And a demonstrably terrible backdash isn’t of much use in any case - Aganos and Hisako’s backdashes don’t even recover fast enough to punish a whiffed throw. Heck, against Aganos I’ve whiffed throw and still managed to tag him with a normal while he was recovering from his backdash.
In terms of people running away from him in instinct, Glacius’ cold shoulder is generally pretty good at covering forward space. He’s actually pretty good at running someone down if they don’t have access to a teleport or something similar. I agree that his instinct can be underwhelming in some MU’s, but in others it’s actually surprisingly strong. And the only difference between Glacius air pokes in S1 and S2 is that in S2 the start-up for them is a bit slower. The hurtboxes are the same, and the limb-priority system is the same it always has been. If I go up with jump heavy and you hit me with jump+medium, you’ll get hit with no trade. This was possible in S1 as well, it was just a bit harder to do because Glacius’ buttons came out so fast. Given the extra poke damage in S2 though, I think the start-up nerf was the right decision. Glacius can get a lot of damage off his random pokes - there needs to be a way to balance against that.
In the end I think Glacius is actually fine where he is right now, and actually think he’s pretty underrated. I do think though that his playstyle has to be modified a bit from what it used to be to realize this potential. I think liquidize is criminally underused by most Glacius players, and I think people really underestimate the degree to which Glacius as a character actually does have a viable vortex now. A vortex that does a ton of damage, particularly on lockout. He also has some of the dirtiest corner pressure in the game. If you try to play him purely defensive then I do think he can maybe be a little underwhelming, but if you’re willing to play him with a hint of aggression (cold shoulder being nearly impossible to punish helps with this) then you’ll find he’s much better than a lot of people realize. That’s my take on the character anyway.
And about the “slowing down” cloud in instinct, something like that would need to really be properly balanced. When Hisako gets slowed by Kan-Ra, she literally cannot combo except off a jump-in or full wrath command throw/recap - her rekkas do not combo even on hit. Any type of persistent instinct buff that Glacius would get would need to avoid this; it’s a problem if he becomes uncombo-able to certain characters for the duration of his instinct.
Shadow puddle punch is actually throw invulnerable until after the initial active frames so is truly throw invulnerable, however as has been discussed above there is a gap between the strike invulnerable frames and the active frames, and Hisako’s possession is an unblockable like shatter rather than an actual throw (which I mentioned above and was liked by Keits 
) so beats throw invulnerable moves which is why it still hits here. Incidentally if there was no gap then as a strike invulnerable move puddle punch would be the best answer to possession for the above listed reasons (as an unblockable it cannot hit any strike invulnerable or airborne opponent - note that this is a different type of unblockable to that possessed by Orchid/Wulf/Maya).
Additionally on the way down liquidize is still vulnerable to strikes and throws for 10 frames. As backdashes have (AFAIK) 7 frames of invulnerability liquidize is actually not a suitable alternative to backdash and loses to a lot more setups (most in fact).
I don’t think he needs buffs either, just clearing a few things up.
Thanks for the clarifications. It would seem I am incorrect about liquidize’s utility on wakeup, so thank you for pointing it out and why. 
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Yeah, liquidize is definitely not a reversal, it’s only supposed to be used to bait stuff when you have good frame advantage (or when you’re trying to win projectile wars).
Well, I think I probably had the impression more from my experience in the Sadira/Glacius MU. It’s not a reversal, but it’s more than fast enough to avoid the majority of Sadira’s aerial pressure. It’s actually quite annoying to come down with a kick only for no one to be there :-p But Sadira pressure doesn’t tend to rely on things being perfectly meaty, so makes sense that’s not a good MU to judge it on.
I still think liquidize is underutilized though. I think it’s best utility is on offense - it gives Glacius another dimension to his mixups.
We are well aware of all those amazing things Glacius has, but underrated? I don’t know about that. All top Glacius players play the way you’re describing to various degrees (with Daffy being the most defensive and Sickle being the most offensive, and the better user of liquidize). True, there may be some stuff we are underestimating, but right now it doesn’t really seem that way.
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I love using it on wakeup if I expect the opponent to sit and block rather than pressure me. They think you’re going to punch them, but instead you grab them. Love it, though I rarely use that since it’s a big risk.
Feel like I keep seeing/hearing people say Glacius is “terrible” or “bottom 5”, and I just don’t think it’s true. Wasn’t necessarily directing the underestimation comment to anyone in this thread in particular, but even here we have quite a few people saying that “needs” something new. I think he could certainly benefit from some of the things people have mentioned, but I don’t think he “needs” any of it. He’s already a very solid character, and even small buffs could push him very quickly into “holy crap this guy is ridiculous”.
Does he have bad MU’s and situations that he can find himself in? Absolutely. But I tend to think those are some of the things that help balance him and keep him from just being insane.
I actually think this is a function of how well balanced the game is overall. The idea of being in the “bottom 5” of KI just isn’t such a big deal. But Glacius does have some glaringly bad matchups, which is a bit unusual in KI. Obviously you are right, they would have to be careful because you don’t want to swing the pendulum too far.
While I don’t feel like many of the suggestions in this thread would make everyone’s favorite icy alien OP, the thing is… even if they DID, they could just patch it later. Characters are always being tweaked and adjusted as new patches drop; the fact that we play a season as it is in development allows for this. I just don’t like the feeling that this fear of one character becoming OP is leaving Glacius stagnant. In fact, I seem to recall one of the devs saying that their design philosophy was to test things that might make a character overpowered and then tone them down if it actually happened. So the fact that everyone is dancing around that for Glacius is… while I understand it, it’s still a little frustrating.
That’s why I’m so happy that threads like this keep popping up. It’s an important issue to keep in mind! Hopefully Iron Galaxy is reading and paying attention and getting some good food for thought here that they can try out at some point!
I main Glacius and i was noticing almost everyone except Glacius has a dash of some sort. Maybe we could get Glacius like an ice slide as a dash? Just a thought.. Besides hisako(who has a fast crawl and back dash) I think Glacius is the slowest! Even the jumps are extremely slow.
Yeah, Glacius is one of the slowest characters in the game. Cold shoulder can function as a pretty safe offensive forward dash though. I’d probably put his overall mobility at second-worst, in front of only Aganos, who has no way to quickly cross the screen that isn’t horribly unsafe.
areed. Has anybody here tried fighting him as Cinder :U if it’s one thing to show like everyone else, you’ll find laicus does well aainst some and bad against others.
Yep. I’m the ONLY Cinder player that thinks the MU is 5-5.