Be that as it may, they’re still very breakable in the same fashion as ADs (L, M, and H).
As with all frame trapping, if your opponent expects it they can DP out.
But bluntly, the advantage ender could put TJ at minus frames and still be by far the best combo trait in the game. TJ gets a white life cashout into +4 frame advantage in a situation where other characters would be eating a full combo punish.
Consider counter breakers. For the typical KI character, if they did opener into heavy auto double – and their opponent didn’t lock out on a guess-break immediately – the options for each player are basically as follows.
Attacker:
- Let it rock
- Counter-break
Defender: - Let it rock
- Reaction heavy break
Assuming we write off opener damage (probably ~10%) as already dealt, the payoffs in terms of lifeswing (damage dealt to defender minus damage dealt to attacker) for each outcome look something like this:
- Both players let it rock: following the opener, you could (conservatively) expect the typical combo to deal at least 12% more damage (factoring in lockouts, breakers and counter-breakers, but ignoring meter). After a successful heavy auto double, however, that number is probably closer to 20% – early heavy doubles hurt, and they also build enough PD to add an ender level.
- Attacker lets it rock, defender breaks heavy: the attacker is put into a soft knockdown. I’ve been pegging this outcome at a -5% lifeswing (that is, averaging out the scenarios where you’re able to open up a knocked-down opponent with those where your opponent reversals out, gets away, wakeup-throws you, etc, the defender could capitalize for an expected 5% after a successful break), but I think that’s giving soft knockdown far too much credit*.
- Attacker counter-breaks, defender lets it rock: if the defender’s reactions are on-point, this should be ~12% opener (nearly 20% with meter) into expected 25-30%.
- Attacker counter-breaks, defender breaks heavy: what’s your best counter-breaker punish without meter, putting aside opener damage? 40%? More?
Without going into the mathematical details, I can tell you that the attacker’s best strategy in this situation (ignoring reads – that is, assuming he can’t predict the defender’s habits) is to let it rock ~3 in every 4 times he finds himself in this situation, and counter-break the remaining 1-in-4 instances; and in the long run, over many instances, he can expect this situation to be worth ~8% lifeswing in his favour by using that strategy.
Now, 8% is…not amazing. Certainly you’d rather avoid reactable auto-doubles, and instead make the defender guess which unreactable linker or manual you’re going to break out, for which the expected lifeswing is higher. But as I’ve said before, 8% is a big enough number to make light linkers viable (otherwise, intuitively, you’d overly rely on light manuals/auto doubles for the follow-up, which’d make you more predictable and hence drag the expected damage downward), and indeed one of the big successes of the season 2 rebalance is that it brought auto doubles back into competitive relevance.
This is where we get to TJ.
What are TJ’s options in a similar situation? For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to merge together the barrage options.
TJ:
- Let it rock
- Counter-break
- Barrage light or medium
Defender: - Let it rock
- “Reaction” heavy break
- Guess-break light or medium
Uh, expected lifeswing? Let’s just fill in the gaps.
- TJ lets it rock, defender guess-breaks light or medium: defender locks out, TJ probably finds 30% on the lockout.
- TJ counter-breaks, defender guess-breaks light or medium: again, there’s probably 40% to be found here for TJ.
- TJ barrages light or medium, defender lets it rock: we’re going to assume TJ immediately chickens out and takes the +4 advantage ender – and we’re even going to assume he gets nothing off of it, for 0% lifeswing. Of course, a good TJ player can probably do better than this.
- TJ barrages light or medium, defender attempts to break heavy: TJ finishes the barrage for, again neglecting opener damage…30%? More?
- TJ barrages light or medium, defender guess-breaks light or medium: 50-50 split between the (exaggerated) -5% on break and (understated) 30% on lockout. 10-15%, on average.
Instead of running this entire scenario, I’m going to provide a few small spoilers. Firstly, guess-breaking light or medium is really bad: an optimal defender wouldn’t do it, and you shouldn’t do it without a strong read. Hopefully that’s clear from the fact that it’s always leading to >10% lifeswing in TJ’s favour! Secondly, barrage completely overshadows counter-breaking: an optimal TJ does so well from using barrage to lock out his opponents, that counter-breaking may as well not be an option. Again, maybe that’s clear from the numbers – especially when you factor in that the defender’s guess-breaking light/medium options are dead, meaning that barrage wins wherever counter-breaking does (whilst not truly losing anywhere).
Again I’ve ran the numbers, and this situation is worth more like 12% in TJ’s favour – even after a bunch of assumptions we made which favour the defender – which TJ can expect if he utilizes barrage in roughly half of instances of this scenario. That’s more in line with the values I’m getting for the typical character’s medium linker follow-up scenario…which in turn actually bolsters the rest of TJ’s combo game, so that for example, TJ’s medium linker follow-up looks more like a typical character’s heavy linker follow-up.
The way people talk about TJ’s barrage nerfs, you’d think he would have the worst combo damage in the entire game. In fact the opposite is likely to be the case.
*Even hard knockdown seems to be overrated by players: when I ran the numbers on a simple attack-block-throw wakeup game (say, for the Jago mirror) I ended up having hard knockdown at ~4%, but that didn’t factor in a long list of tech which I feel favour the defender. A character who has good wakeup setups (e.g. fireball teleport mixups) can obviously milk hard knockdowns for more than that, but soft knockdown is certainly not long enough to get anything like that running.
2 Likes
Well… no, not really. If she uses the target combo, you have to change the break strength on the second hit. It’s not really an easy reaction. It’s basically like breaking a manual.
Can either of you please explain to me the allure of playing Jago? I personally find him to be a relatively boring character, but maybe that’s just me. Or maybe it’s his haircut that irritates me? I don’t know, either way, I don’t understand the popularity or the need to create a Shadow Jago. As if one wasn’t bad enough.
So, in other words, she’s still broken - got it! 
I do personally like the balanced, Shoto style of Jago. He has great easy manuals, Good normals, and a all around Jack of All trades. I’ve loved Jago since KI 1. However, I can see where your coming from. It’s all about preference, and who you like to play more. He may not have the allure you are looking for, and that’s fine.
Shadow Jago is going to be so drastically different, that comparing him to Jago is like Icing on the Cake. Sure, some moves are similar/identical, but the properties and the way they are used, Completely different. He is going to be a completely revamped character, with a different playstyle than Jago. If you’d want to compare it to playstyle, it seems it will be a mix of Omen Projectile Pressure, and Faints, Baits, and Tons of Frame Traps. 
Who knows, maybe you’ll become a Shadow Jago player. 
It’s not that hard to break it, IMO. 
It really just means that air combos, instead of being unbreakable as in S1, are now just “pretty hard to break” in S2. If Sadira is broken it’s probably not because she has air target combos.
Just wanted to clarify for you that both hits of Sadira’s “air auto-doubles” as you’ve called them are not the same strength, and they don’t function like auto-doubles in the combo engine.
Isn’t the second hit of her target combos always medium? I’ve not once ever been locked out on her target combos, do people just not use the other strengths?
Infil. Kinda lost. You guys are talking about Sadira’s Air combos right? Like if you hit Medium Kick in the air she does two kicks instead of a single one? I might have to read backwards to catch up.
/Carry on
Haha who knows? I just may. Omen is pretty interesting, although sometimes his random projectiles can make or break you. It’s reassuring to hear somebody say “Shadow Jago is going to be so drastically different”… It makes me feel better about the situation- as I understood it, I knew that SJ and Jago wouldn’t be the same exact character, that would be a complete waste of time, but them having close similarities wouldn’t necessarily surprise me either.
Speaking of SJ, how is it that some people own him already when he’s not technically been released?
I’m pretty sure it’s always light, then medium, yes (but I’m no Sadira player). But Sadira can choose to not do the target combo and instead do jump light into kunai (which will give you a timing lockout), and her medium kick always hits twice in the air (so it could be medium-medium break instead of light-medium).
I suppose if you can reliably react to “the second hit of something”, you can successfully always break mediums but I’m not convinced it’s very easy in the middle of a match, and don’t flinch if she mixes it up with normal into kunai because you’ll lock out.
It’s a skin, Originally for people who got Day One Cards when XB1 first came out, since then, there have been ways to get him including the KI Community Fund we had for Tourneys, which also was a fund to help get SJ his boss moveset.
So then, It’s like breaking manuals. Similar to TJ’s Light to Med. Punch in the air, It’s just a target Combo that can be broken on reaction. Right? Or am I wrong?
If you can react to the second hit, then it’s always medium, yes. But unlike TJ, Sadira can do one hit into unbreakable (kunai) so you’d better be sure you can react correctly.
I’m not a Sadira expert and her air combos are, I think, considerably more advanced than “did she do target combo or not”… you’d have to ask them for specifics though.
In my opinion? The allure is that he’s the easy-mode, super safe OP character in the game. Words don’t properly describe how much I hate him, compounded by the fact that I have to play him in upwards of 70% of my matches online.
Not everyone shares my opinion, and though others have tried to explain his “balance” to me, my firsthand experience all backs up how I feel.*** I’m not the best person to ask about Jago.***
That makes sense. But TJ has two variants of his target Combo in the air, One that does a hard knockdown, and one that continues a combo. Isn’t the Knockdown one unbreakable? Or just too quick to react to? I know with Sadira, she’s quick enough that you may not be to react to everything, and does have some unbreakable setups. But yes, I will ask someone who knows more. It’s hard to talk about a character you don’t play, I’ll tell you hwat.
Just checked, if she does Kunai you actually can’t get locked out, so simply hitting medium after her first hit is a pretty safe thing to do, the only thing she can do to stop it is counter break.
This is sounding a bit too close to logic for my tastes, you might want to scale it back a bit.
Have you considered modeling the S1 combo breaker system? I kind of want to see what happens when combo breakers are hard knockdowns (and Thunder/Glacius got crazy, crazy oki), there is no first-hit bonus (so there is less unbreakable damage), and shadow enders do a set amount of damage. I’m curious if there was ever a reason for Jago to do anything except opener, 1/3 manual, shadow ender, even considering he gets 1/3 manuals after all linkers if he does a full KV combo. It’s weird, because both of them seem really good. Was there ever a reason to use heavy linkers? What about for non-Jago characters who could do 3 strengths after medium linker but only 2 after light linker?
I’m a Jago main, though I’m working on a Glacius and a Riptor, and I can kinda play Fulgore.
For me, KI being my first “serious” fighting game, I picked Jago because he (ostensibly, at least) sat in the middle of the archetype spectrum: he has rushdown, footsies and zoning tools, he was pegged as a “Jack-of-all-trades” style of character. The appeal of that is in being able to expose myself to a variety of archetypes and therefore learn the genre more quickly, and also being able to adjust my playstyle to counter my opponent’s archetype to some degree.
Having learnt Jago, I’m not sure that’s exactly how it has played out. For one, Jago’s zoning tools aren’t incredibly potent: his fireball is pretty basic and largely ignored by a lot of rushdown characters, his pokes don’t have amazing range, and wind kick is a commitment (albeit one often worth taking!). Jago’s footsies are a thing, but only because you can play them under shelter of a medium wind kick threat: the payoff for a connecting wind kick, and relative lack of punishment for a blocked wind kick, make it so that an opponent is encouraged to hold back a lot when in wind kick range, which is enough disincentive such that you can walk up and try to double roundhouse or crMK xx medium laser sword them or something, which goes into his pressure game (or a combo).
His pressure game (combined with the aforementioned footsies dynamics) is what makes Jago interesting to me. Jago can frame trap for days, and there’s a depth to balancing out pushback, duration of frame traps, capitalization with openers, shadow counterability, throw/overhead mixups, etc. There’s something ultra satisfying about Jago’s overhead, throwing it onto a thoroughly conditioned opponent after some arbitrary jab or laser sword and just confidently wrecking an unsuspecting opponent. I spend by far the most of my practice time working on Jago’s pressure, and it’s slowly getting more sophisticated. (This, by-the-by, is part of the appeal of learning Riptor for me.)
Jago also has some fun tech that you can lab out and integrate into his combos or into his neutral, which is great because I spend quite a bit of time in the lab. But I think this is true of most of the cast.
I guess a lot of these things are pretty basic mechanical “joys of playing a fighting game” things, albeit flavored by the trademark KI fear of getting wrecked by something vaguely OP like a surprise wind kick from midscreen. I could get all artsy and described Jago as the “pure, distilled essence” of that, I guess. I’ll actually play Jago mirrors for hours, because I find a lot of depth in the decision-making in neutral and pressure situations.
Oh, very different. No more wind kick, no more laser sword. Shago gains a slide, a divekick, and an overhead which can be canceled into off of normals, that combined make him sound a bit like Wulf – and that’s without thinking about the surge mechanic. Suffice it to say, my description of how Jago plays above is probably completely out the window with Shago.