I agree that kan-ra is one of the weakest characters in the game. Whether or not IG thinks that changing that is a good idea is up to them, but I think he could be buffed in small ways that make him more enjoyable to play. I’m going to highlight some frustrations I have with playing him, but don’t take this as me suggesting he be improved in all of these areas. I just think that there’s MANY areas where he could see small improvements in ways that don’t make him tangibly more frustrating to fight.
I do understand that characters should be designed with weaknesses in mind, and I’m not going into this from the point of view that all of the flaws he has are unintentional or something. I just think that as far as weaknesses go, he may have too many.
First, I agree with @F3Sleep that sandsplosion is not a move worth using, at least not very often. Considering just how risky it is, and how little he gets for successfully using it, solid blocking seems more like the way to go. I don’t think it would be too much to make it instinct cancellable, or reduce the amount of PD it builds.
I’m usually the one arguing against this point of view, but for kan-ra specifically it rarely feels worth it to spend time in the combo system. So many of his best tools are multihits, plus his linkers have worse-than-normal scaling, and the end result is that without meter kan-ra just doesn’t see much reward for extending combos–he often ends up starting a combo close to level 2, but scaled so heavily he’s unlikely to reach level 3 or 4. He can’t even open a combo from a light attack without scaling it by 5 hits and adding a bunch of KV. Would it be unreasonable for him to just have normal linker scaling?
As far as defense goes, the issue isn’t just sandsplosion–kan-ra has terrible options to deal with frame neutral situations, or even ones where his opponent is in his face and minus. Not only does he have no fast normals that are plus or even on block, he doesn’t have any chainable lights. He’s just terrible at getting back to a distance where he likes to fight. To compare to glacius, the iceman’s 2LP is 5 frames and +1 on block, with range pretty close to kan’s 2MK, which at 9 frames is his fastest plus on block move that creates space. That kind of direct comparison does glaze over differences between the two characters but I think it’s worth pointing out that glacius ALSO has a resourceless DP that does big damage, can be safe for a bar, and gives him a chance to get hail out, while being a similar character archetype to kan-ra. Maybe he shouldn’t be able to mash his way to safety whenever someone gets close, but SOME tool to create space safely would help a lot.
Kan’s splat/launcher enders are some of the worst in the game. His wallsplat doesn’t give him enough time to use options other than throw for a meaningful mixup, and his launcher ender only allows for light followups at levels 1/2/3. I get that recaptures off launchers are strong but given how heavily his combos scale anyway I wonder if making his followup after launcher a mixup beyond the counterbreak mindgame would really be a problem.
Getting into more nitpicky territory, what’s the deal with shadow clutch? Like…I get the ender version, but the neutral version of the move is pretty much pointless–slow, easily jumpable, and even if it connects the damage is pitiful. I guess the throw invul is good but I’d rather just backdash or tech and not lose a bar if I guessed wrong. Like, you could buff the move’s damage by 80% (from ~44 damage to ~80 damage) and it probably still wouldn’t be that good.
I also think that just as an ease of use thing, giving him bigger windows to cancel to linkers/doubles after his openers would make him more approachable for someone wanting to learn him. Specifically for scarab opener, the window to cancel is annoyingly small.
I dunno, there’s a good chance all this is stuff has already been taken into consideration. I’m just saying that I would enjoy kan-ra more if some of this stuff was adjusted. He can be buffed without being brought back to season 2 status.