What I struggle with AS a Tusk player is getting broken. I frankly HATE playing the breaking game. So something that kept me from playing at top level since KI first came out was my unwillingness to play that game. Either breaking or counter-breaking.
Due to this mindset, I’ve had to reevaluate this game plan.
Again, I’m not trying to attack you personally. I’m just saying the problem isn’t Tusk, it’s your unfamiliarity.
What I will say, is it is not wise to go onto a gaming forum and claim a character is “brain dead” especially since NO one has had enough time with him to prove he is or to learn the most efficient way, per character, to counter his style.
For once i think we can agree on a character because i feel the same way about him. He is kind of stupid in my book and one of my favorite parts that you said about him is, “all you need is a hit confirm and a lockout and you practically win” we had the same problem with a season 2 character, maya. you got your pips real quick, tapped for a quick lockout/combo, cash out with dagger ender and do 50% every time and they got rid of it for maya in season 3 but made it worse by giving it to a character who does A LOT more damage and without having to build up a resource 1 break opportunities if you miss boom instant 40-55%. No one like that strategy on maya but now tusk gets it and it’s perfectly fine. Come on now let’s be real.
Are you seriously comparing Tusk to S2 Maya? I admit I was mostly watching at the time but me thinks the aerial projectile strats of Maya are a wee bit far from the slow un-cancelable normals Tusk has to work with.
Again, I’d love to see these one lockout 80% combos.
Like I look at Rico Suave. And I look at Guttermagic.
And I really don’t see many if at all these massive life bar deleting combos. I go into training mode and I can pull maybe 74-76% off one bar but that involves slapping someone with +MP. Which is so heavily telegraphed you have to be sleeping to get hit by it. I’ve seen Max pull it off once, that’s about it.
And the reason for that is these combos are really REALLY impractical. It’s like MKX when people ■■■■ themselves over a 98% Kotal Kahn combo. Yet Blood God Kotal was like bottom 5 forever.
In my case I have no good mix ups, no crazy cross ups, and my block strings if I ever think to use them (because I am garbage) are slow enough they can be shadow countered. I either have to outplay you or make you outplay yourself. My gameplay is too honest otherwise.
Maya has a lot more methods of starting a combo than Tusk.
@GalacticGeek you exclusively or nearly exclusively play one of the most unique characters in the game. Aganos handles every matchup in the game in a unique way and in turn every character in the game has to completely change their play style when fighting Aganos. Frankly, you are in this thread using the same tired lines as other people. “I beat Tusk all the time, but I just think it’s dumb that he gets all that easy damage. He’s easy to play and one mistake against him costs you 80%.” But do you play Tusk? These easy brainless things that you dismiss are not so easy to do. Tusk doesn’t do 80% one chance break combos. He doesn’t. And as all the actual Tusk players are trying to tell you, those high damage combos are not a significant factor in his gameplan. It’s his high damage early in the combo and in neutral that matters - and this is why he would not survive damage nerfs.
But every time someone tries to discuss this with you, it seems like you jump straight to “don’t tell me how this game works! I’ve been playing for years and I say Tusk is dumb!” If you are the expert then there’s no point having a discussion. Since you claim that you don’t need matchup help there is nothing left for people to do except be defensive and say “Tusk isn’t dumb, you’re wrong!” It’s not really productive.
I can tell you that Aganos is not a terrific matchup for Tusk, but if you stay in midrange then you are right, it will be hard for you to punish his moves. In my experience, Aganos can be a lot of trouble for tusk at longer ranges. Tusk can’t close quickly to keep you from getting chunks so chunk up to four and then toss rocks from long distance. When Tusk tries to close punish his jumps and slides with whatever that overhand full screen high damage punch is. There are lots of things that you can do - tusk has no real answer for that stupid shadow move where rocks rain down from the sky. Chunk up, long range wall behind Tusk, chunk up , throw rocks, punish Tusk coming over the rock.
My point is Aganos can’t punish everything Tusk does without meter at every range. So spacing is a huge deal in this matchup just like all of Tusk’s match ups. When you start to think about this maybe you will see that Tusk is not so “automatic” after all. It actually requires a series of good decisions for him to get in on you. And for me, certainly I have better uses for his shadow meter than to try to take a 50% combo through another break attempt and to 80%. I’m better off saving that meter to be a shoulder opener to punish Aganos or some other use. There’s a lot going on in this match.
First: @BallisticSalsa, that is one of the best names I have ever seen
Second:
I am hurt that anyone might think Hisako isn’t an honest character. I think she’s one of the most scrupulously honest characters in the game actually - pretty much anything she hits you with is off of a hard read.
(And as a hint: the proper punish for her doing unsafe things is a throw).
Third:
Tusk does not steal 50 or 60% of your lifebar off a single mistake, unless that mistake is a counter breaker, where just about everyone can get that kind of damage off of you. Tusk hits very hard in neutral, and his DP ender cashes out for a lot, but unless you’re locking out very early, he’s unlikely to be hitting you this hard with any regularity. From what I can tell, he actually tends to get a great deal of his damage off well placed pokes in neutral.
Fourth:
There is no such thing. If you’re getting reset, then you are by definition getting opened up again, i.e. not blocking (correctly). What you’re talking about sounds like stagger normal->follow up kick->stagger normal. Simply holding back will get you out of this reset, as to my knowledge Tusk does not have a low that staggers. You are correct that you wouldn’t be able to break this, and it’s entirely possible that he’s got a good loop that will get you counter hit if you try to mash out. As far as KI resets go though, this one isn’t all that spectacular - there’s no crazy cross-up involved, and no command grab (or even normal grab at the range this would be effective at) to worry about. Just keep blocking and you should be fine.
Fifth:
I applaud your use of that GIF @OlafBludhaven
@STORM179 just a to clarify I was just making the point that all of the S2 cast has generally silly stuff. I do not see Hisako as unbalanced or unfair.
Lol. Sorry, wasn’t my intention to try and put you (or anyone) on blast or anything. I was going to put a smiley next to the “hurt” part, but couldn’t find a good place to do it.
Some people really do hate Hisako though - I’ve seen any number of “she’s so unfair!” rage messages and complaints over the past year.
Fine, Tusk may not actually be a braindead character, and may in fact take skill to actually use (as with any character), but I still think he has to work a whole lot less than other characters to get what he needs. I still stand by what I said: 1 combo, 1 lockout, and the game (and his opponent) does half the work for him (it may not be up to 80%, but it’s still high enough). I still believe that he’s designed in such a way that he actually causes the other player not to want to attack him, which as I said before, makes the game anticlimactic, slow, boring, and not fun. Furthermore, if the opponent is afraid to attack him, then he can’t effectively use his own mechanic - it’s practically self-defeating.
In any case, Tusk is not my only issue at present. Since the start of S3, I’ve had numerous issues with Aganos himself that I did not have prior to S3. S3 changes aside (which I admit I am still getting used to, particularly with the grounded heavy attacks ignoring armor aspect), it seems to me that there’s a lot of whonky errors or glitches with Aganos post-S3. I’ve posted about it in my most recent post in the Aganos subforum in the thread called “Aganos vs. S3” if you’d like to read up on it. I’d link you to it, myself, but I can’t do that easily via the XB1 MS Edge app (sorry). In summary though, I’ve had moves come out when they’re not supposed to (standing HK as I activate instinct or just after), not come out at all when I do want them to (shadow ruin and shadow natural disaster), and a lot of the time, my block doesn’t even come out when it should (and not just because I blocked incorrectly). Naturally, you can see why this might make things difficult for me, regardless of who I may be fighting. In addition to that, I’ve done some testing - it’s not my controller and I don’t have the same issue with other characters - it’s just him.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told my main is “Bulls***”. I fear Tusk players might be dealing with the same accusations - please accept my sympathy/empathy.
Thank you - the vogue thing to say on twitter now is “LOL I Feel so bad taking 80% from someone in one combo - is this fair?”… as though other characters aren’t dealing that much on counter-breaks? I’m beginning to think people are just fishing for things to say to make themselves sound intelligent…
You don’t get to curb an exaggeration about your character and then make the exact same kind of exaggeration about another character, come on now.
Okay, normally I’d call ■■■■■■■■ on stuff like this and say you’re doing something wrong, but I have witnessed similar execution bugs while playing as Tusk (trying to Ultra using the PPP macro button to clinch out the win, yet it ends up doing his splitter ender instead) so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Regardless, though, all I’m reading is that you’re mad about not being used to the match up, yet somehow you’re almost always winning?
Every single time you’ve written “I’m not used to” that’s on you, meaning Tusk isn’t beating you, you’re beating you. If you’re not used to the rhythm of his HK autos, then practice more. If you’re not used to the way it feels to get hit by a stagger attack, practice more.
Speaking of stagger, I don’t really understand your issue here. You say that it feels like the combo should drop because of how long it takes for the next hit to connect, yet that’s the entire purpose of the stagger mechanic in the first place; to allow Tusk to follow up on those massive hit confirms he relies on. It’s what the mechanic does, it’s not going to just magically change itself because you think the combo should have dropped by now based on feels.
You are correct. Pretty sure nobody has argued otherwise. This is the objective to Tusk’s deflect ability.
I don’t really have any sympathy for this. Tusk making you afraid to hit him means you have to think carefully while playing the game. If this is such an awful and boring scenario for you then I honestly don’t know what to say here.
Not every match up is going to be a guns blazing button bonanza; sometimes you have to be methodical and play the Street Fighter part of the game.
Now what I’ve only seen one person mention in this thread, and in regards to a completely unrelated character, is throws. @STORM179 said throws blow up Hisako at the right moment, and he’s totally right. Throws are also the same kryptonite for Tusk because he can’t deflect them.
Now we have Aganaos who has the largest throw range in the game, meaning if Tusk is within that range he’s in trouble because that big fat hand is going to blast him right in the mouth.
The Tusk v Aganos match is in Aganos’ favor, and so far I haven’t seen anything to prove otherwise. If we’re in neutral and I’m outside your throw range, that means I’m too far away to deflect anything other than your s.HP, which is only going to be a hard read, and that read is hard indeed.
Besides that, any of my sword attacks will be too slow at this range and Aganos is in full comfort zone to stomp, shoot a boulder, or even attempt to go in with ND or something. Point is, at this range Aganos is good to go, and anything further than this is even better for him.
What makes this matchup so hard for Tusk is normally that is his favourite range to be in, but against Aganos it doesn’t work because of the armor chunks. The only grounded heavy he can ever hope to hit Aganos with at this range is HK and unfortunately he’s still too far away for that to connect, so he has to rely on the forward movement it allows and try for his own grab mixup to start something. Which, by the way, is what Tusk starts doing when you’re too afraid to attack him:
Tusk players are pretty aware that we can’t deflect you if you don’t try to hit us, but if you don’t try to hit us that means we can freely move in on you and tickle yer bum. It’s all part of the plan, my friend.
Mind you, if Aganos isn’t attacking us and we try for the aforementioned HK approach, or perhaps try to spirit dash for a mix up, you can just grab us first anyways if you’re paying attention.
So which is it, Geek, do you know what hit you or not?
That Tusk player you fought that burned you down with some weird HK reset outplayed you, simple as that.
So here’s what I think: I think you don’t actually win against Tusk as much as you would like and are just salty about having to adapt to something new that you yourself have admitted you’re still getting used to. So you got locked out because you got the auto wrong and ate some damage that you absolutely deserved (because that’s how the combo system works in this game, after all) and somehow didn’t want to admit that you goofed up so it’s much easier to say Tusk is braindead and didn’t have to work for that hit. The game doesn’t care about your feelings when you try to break on the wrong attack, I’m sorry.
And you know what? It’s okay to be salty. I know I got salty fighting Shadow Jago back in March and had to grind my teeth about it for a few hours, and that’s just part of the learning process.
I have to clarify for Spadaa here:
He was saying that you aren’t familiar enough with Tusk’s attacks, not that you don’t know what openers and manuals and ■■■■ are. Which is something you had just admitted in the post he was responding to.
Anyways, I think I’ve made my point, so I’ll close with that you need to plug those adapters in and practice up against the stuff you’re having trouble with, and try to not to let yourself run away with the thought that this character is brainless just because he’s throwing you off.
Wow, that’s a reply to an old post if I’ve ever seen 1 - not very timely there, buddy. Since I wrote that post, I’ve figured a lot out thanks to Infil in another thread when I was practicing with Tusk myself to figure him out. As it turns out, the fact that Tusk can’t do a special after his standing MP or HP (specifically, his qcb+P) and has to resort to manuals explains why I often got locked out when fighting against him (he was literally not following the standard combo string like every other character does due to his stagger). The gap before the manual also contributed to numerous timing lockouts. Now that I know this, as well as the recent update changes to his combos, he is no longer a problem for me (still boring to fight though).
I haven’t been here in a while, sue me.
Surprising you didn’t know he cant cancel from sword moves considering it was mentioned in this thread, but I’m glad you’re at least making progress now.
Also, what are these changes and where can I find them?
Interesting changes. Not sure if I totally agree with the opener thing but deflects counted as openers anyways so I guess thems the breaks. In fact I think it should be reversed and deflects don’t count as openers because you got punished big time, but oh well.
I’m also not really looking forward to the raw damage change they’re talking about in later updates. If I’m understanding it correctly that means we’re losing ender levels after a deflect, and it was my understanding deflects were an opportunity for big damage so that sounds a little annoying.
The trade off being we get that potential damage automatically cashed out, so a break in the combo wouldn’t be able to take away that damage, so I guess I can live with that.
As long as Tusk continues to hit really hard, I’m okay with it. It’s his job, after all.
I think it’s really just one thing that was the “problem”: stagger normal into shadow skull splitter. This was unbreakable, put level 2 (almost level 3) ender on the guy, and gave a free manual. My guess is that it’s not so much that he gets to follow up with another unbreakable attack, but that this can be a high damaging shadow + free manual was maybe a bit much.
If it was always just stagger normal → the same unbreakable special move opener → combo system, I doubt they’d have made the change, but that’s also pretty boring. It hurts Tusk a bit, but it’s not too bad I think, especially since raw damage from the stagger normal is permanently dealt, even if you break.
It might force him to learn one or two more followups after stagger normals, but at least it doesn’t change his gameplan at all.
The bug was that a deflect gave white life on top of the raw damage, because being a 2nd hit in a combo automatically deals white damage, and deflects were apparently programmed to be a 2nd hit. This is, actually, probably why stuff after deflect was breakable (3 move rule), not because deflects were “openers”.
So until they figure out how to warp the game engine to let them do deflects without adding white damage, they just downgraded the raw damage (on deflect only, non-deflect versions are unchanged) for now so the cash out doesn’t send it to the stratosphere. They’ll put it back once they fix it so that deflect vs non-deflect is always the same damage, always the same combo opener, always the same breakability.
I understand why you might think that deflect → opportunity for more damage than just getting hit regularly, but I think they intended that deflecting was just a way to avoid being counter hit, not also rewarded with more damage.
The way I see the deflect is that they are paying for thinking they could hit you, and Tusk is being rewarded for seeing that opportunity and timing his deflect since it’s a precision technique. I figured something like that deserved a bit of extra damage, is all, but the complete turnaround of momentum is pretty nice.
I haven’t played in over a month and those unbreakables were admittedly fun, and I’m honestly not surprised they were changed so I abused the hell out of them in the meantime.
The real thing that’s bothering me is the bug on cr.HP deflect is still present; characters hit by this while crossing you up will get recaptured behind Tusk and his attack will miss completely and they recover first despite Tusk making the correct play. Not cool.
The changes are unfortunate but do stop the 50% one chance break shenanigans that often happen.
I just wish Tusk had better ways to get damage in. Many games it feels like a poke fest where I have to live in the neutral or die in the close pressure punish.
Honestly I think the solution is really simple. Give me more chip on my sword normals. Not more damage, not more mix ups. More pressure on the opponent to do something.
As for things not hitting behind him. I disagree. He’s way too easy to cross up otherwise.
+MP. Which is so heavily telegraphed you have to be sleeping to get hit by it. I’ve seen Max pull it off once, that’s about it.
