So for a character that’s spending her health on these special moves they’re not really that great. Yeah unreactable high/low sounds good but at the end of the day it’s a 50/50 on whether it’ll hit or not so you’re just gambling with your health. The medium spiral arrow is pointless outside of a few set ups and the heavy spiral arrow is just your basic + on block special move that the majority of the cast has for free. Add to that the fact that all four of those moves are stupid easy to shadow counter since you can shadow counter either the first or second hits of all of them.
More and more I find myself not even bothering with these moves when building meter into shadow bats lets you get way better mix ups than the reapings and it costs you only a tiny bit of health of you go for an airdash cross back over or a mist through. At this point the only things I’m spending health on are mist on wake up and heavy linkers on lockout. And I don’t feel like I’m being limited by that playstyle either, it actually feels much more effective since I’m not constantly worried about where my health is at.
Reaping only hits twice so I don’t know where you’re getting a shadow counter on both the first or second hit.
Mira has the air mobility of characters like Omen and Sadira, the ground game mix-ups and normals of Orchid, the projectile assists of Omen, and Omen’s Shadow form for zero meter. Not to mention that her 50/50 move is safe on block. That is a huge deal. You really aren’t sacrificing all that much health to do it either when you account for how much raw damage she deals.
I think she has the best tools in the game, mostly due to reaping and the mist form. Reaping is actually extremely hard to shadow counter because it’s difficult to know where to place it. You cannot really react to the difference in the opponent doing a raw reaping or using a normal right before, and that matters in terms of when your tiny shadow counter window should be at.
I’ve had the medium drill make a shadow counter whiff, so that’s a thing apparently. As to the rest of your post, I guess I’m just kind of “eh”. Mira is a constant balance character - there’s always tension between preserving life and getting just that little bit extra. A lot of times that extra +2 advantage isn’t worth the life loss - sometimes it is. That tension applies to all her pressure.
I think there will be a pretty clear delineation in player styles between Mira. Some players will prefer the risker but more oppressive pressure options she has, while others will play her a lot more straight up and with a focus on never exposing too much gray life. I think that’s good though - it’s always nice when you can find different player styles for a single character like that.
Yeah she’s odd. You beat the hell out of people online, then still lose due to trouble renewing your health. I feel she should do even more damage than she does. Doesn’t seem that much better than everyone else, considering what she’s gives up.
TBH, there is no reason to play mira over omen in the first place seeing that you can hit omen and his fireballs stay on screen while mira’s bats go away after you get hit which is ■■■■ STUPID seeing that you gotta spend health to get a decent mix up after a HKD!!!
his air mobility is the same but it don’t cost health! I think I’ve lost more matches because I was losing blood due to combing and not ending with qcb+hk vs actually getting my azz beat lol… none the less I still like that she isn’t a blue glob with wings… and thats basically the only reason why I like her more than omen… But Omen has the same options but better!
you get way less utility out of light bats plus risk the chance of shadow counters than can lead to more life lost… damge doesn’t make a character especially one thats easily breakable or for better reason can easily die of trying to get damage…
I think she’s just right. As Storm said, you can play her conservatively or go balls out and hope for the best - OR, you can do both in one match, which is what I prefer when appropriate
The risk-reward doesn’t quite suggest a “50/50” situation. Mira can open you up low without going to as much trouble – medium reaping costs half as much blood, and crMK is a good button which she can use to threaten low from a good range and often without giving up her “turn” due to range, bats, etc – so you’re probably going to be leaning towards low block in the long run.
Mind, I guess it’s closer to a 50/50 than other previously unreactable mixups have been/still are. Wulf could threaten low in your face at frame advantage several times (which Mira can’t), and jumping slash gave up a punish on block, so the risk-reward was a very lopsided “default to low block, try to read the overhead, if you read the overhead you win” situation. (Well, and also try to read dashthroughs and tech throws.) By comparison, if Mira is willing to ignore her health and get some medium or heavy bats on the screen, she can make you truly guess between options which she can sample with 50/50 odds and then make you guess again even if you guess right. Hell, even being safe on block is more lopsided than the Wulf situation. It’s not a true 50/50 – she’s killing herself more for one option, so you should expect her to favour the other option if she plays optimally – but it’s closer than other high-low mixups in KI tend to be, and being able to iterate on it means that if she wants to, she can basically invalidate your defenses at a whim (1 in 2 chance of blocking one mixup, 1 in 4 of blocking two consecutively, 1 in 8 of blocking three…).
This at least has psychological value: it can demoralize an opponent who puts effort into good defense, because Mira can use her blood to force unilateral control over the flow of the match, meaning that to some extent the opponent forgoes their ideas about where the match should go and is left trying to do as well as possible in the situations Mira serves up.
This point has been labored elsewhere, but gambling with your health is what fighting games are all about: you’re always committing to a strategic line that costs you life if your opponent just happens to choose a line that beats yours. All characters do this, they just don’t pay life to use specials via an explicit mechanic like Mira does.
Trephine is Mira’s “close half the screen with a high priority hitbox” move, which makes safety and (especially) plus frames on block very strong. Can you imagine if Jago’s medium wind kick (already one of the best moves in the game) was friggen +2 on block?!? You’d do four or so frame traps, then wind kick back in and do four more, and it’d be absolutely disgusting.
Mira’s situation is slightly different, because she’s probably not frame-trapping your for days unless you have no meter and no DP. But heavy trephine is still a potent move, and nearly nobody gets this caliber of move “for free”. (Maybe TJ powerline into spin fist in instinct? Arbiter overhead, sorta? Hell, shadow moves like shadow wind kick?)
I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t have a solid “base” Mira game that uses minimal blood. Mira has good buttons, light bats seem great, and Mira has a good aerial approach for free. You should be able to take a lot of games with that stuff, too. But the stuff that comes at a high blood premium is really potent, and should allow you to force the situation even when your opponent is on-point.
On a good hard knockdown setup, you get about the same pressure off light bats as you do with the other strengths - the purpose is simply to lock them in place so they have to take your mixup. And I can’t see why any light bat setup should be all that much more shadow counterable than a medium or heavy. Heavy bats travel slow, but if any bat is hitting the opponent (and the purpose of the setup is to lock them down), then it is by definition giving the opponent a chance to shadow counter. Light bats are not particularly more difficult to get shadow counters off of on a HKD setup than one of the other ones…
And damage may not solely define how good a character is, but it sure as heck tends to be better to do more damage than less. Mira has plenty of ways to regain life, and no one is saying you have to play super suicidal and use heavy linkers all the time. Grand scheme of things, Mira has great tools for opening the opponent up, and because of her damage output she can punish mistakes within combo harder than almost anyone in the game. You’re crazy if you think that isn’t important.
She has bad AA, she’s fairly easy to break, she’s extremely easy to shadow counter, and some characters can easily punish her teleport, but…
@Natsuv2 dunno where you’re getting 3rd or 4th most damaging. Mira is the most damaging character in the game by a MASSIVE margin. Like, if thunder was a 10 and tusk turned it up to 11, mira is at a solid 15.
And yet, she struggles vs some characters. Beyond the fact that practically every character has some jump in that’ll make her cry, her ability to stop other characters with air mobility is very poor. Omen is particularly painful; his fireballs often occupy the vertical space that mira’s strongest approaches cover, his airdash is extremely hard to stop even if you’ve got a read on it, and with the rate he builds meter his shadow counter is frequently a problem.
Bad matchups are a part of any fighter though. Mira is a character with glaring weaknesses, but that doesn’t mean that she is, as a character, weak.
Mira has the best tools in the whole game at the cost of life. That’s her character design.
Still, just cause they’re good doesn’t mean they always work. So far I’m not having too much trouble fighting Miras. I just block until I find an opening, then terrorize her on wakeup.
I guessed at her damage by feel. It still feels to me like Tusk, Thunder, and Kim Wu do more damage than her. I’m also factoring in things like Thunder’s shadow command grab, Tusk’s standing Heavy, and other neutral game things that do lots of damage. I also happen to play Mira with very short, choppy combos. I tend to put people against the wall and then do 1-2 chance breaks into bat end so I can keep getting all my life back.
I also don’t see how you think every character makes her struggle due to their jump-ins. All you have to do is upwards mist on reaction to a jump in and you get a full punish. If they actually did throw an aerial attack, they won’t have the trip guard necessary to block your falling HK.
You can’t mist up on reaction to a jump in, even the floatiest of jumps will land and can do stuff before you reappear. If you wanna catch trip guard you literally have to mist at the same time they input their jump which is way earlier than reacting.
While this is true, it still turns an opponent’s jump in into a mixup/pressure situation for you. It’s still a very good option she has, that also deals with crossup attempts.
