Kan-Ra S3 general discussion

Yea lets keep learning. Gotta figure out a way to make regular swarm more useful to me somehow

I love and hate it when people come back with reasonable answers ggs.

Kan was always supposed to be the most difficult character in the game to play. Some things he had in s2 negated that.

Hes a character where you have to lab alot vs every single character. You have to know the spacing to make things safe vs a certain character and your neutral game has to be on point. Being difficult doesnā€™t mean bad. Idk about top 10.the character has a small margin for error without as much to make up for it if heā€™s behind. But not bad.

When comparing him to characters like glacius or cinder you have to look at things kan has that they donā€™t. For example glacius doesnā€™t have kan raā€™s mobility. And both his, along with gargos both of their long range limb attacks can be hit out of while kan canā€™t. Gargos in some ways is in the same boat as kan. His own set play can backfire on him and there are characters who just easily disrespect all of his options. They both have a mutual struggle against rash and fulgore among others. Cinderā€™s bombs go in an arc, meaning they wonā€™t always land and sometimes they can leave him open while throwing them if he isnā€™t careful, just like kan canā€™t recklessly throw out swarms. (im not saying kan is as good as these characters. At least not cinder and Glacius. Iā€™d rate him and gargos around the same and put him above sadira out of the characters mentioned.)

Building on a point @lHagenl made earlier about shadow trap,it can also be used to assist in comebacks. It builds decent white life and slows the opponent which changes their whole gameplan and makes openings easier for kan as well as grab setups since they have to be much more careful about jumping. They have to worry about the tail constantly stinging them command grabs, swarms and kan just bonking them with his long range normals. Naturally this is amplified while in instinct.

A character like kan is going to have some natural counters. Set up heavy characters always have brutal matchups. For kan the worst offender is obviously rash, for gargos itā€™s aganos for eagle itā€™s omen etc. So itā€™s just better to have a pocket for the bigger problems.

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In s2 that was true but in s3 I think glacuis is far more mobile than kan. The only weakness glacuis has is he lacks a long range heavy poke move to beat armor. He has no weaknesses

Also I dont think gargos and cinder are in the same boat as kan ra at all. I will say shinhisako and kim wu are closest to kan ra

To be meant to be a diffucult char is one thing but to genuinely make him a buggy char to make him difficult and balanced is plain wrong.

All these talk about whether kan ra is good doesnt matter. All we want is for his buggy moves to be fixed that is all. Everyone here just saying his own thing lol.

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Fixing bugs and glitches should always be a priority, as it can hamper high level play. We Sadira mains are still waiting for IG to fix a web bug where the web sometimes doesnā€™t open nor even capture an opponent. Standard non-projectile proof attacks some to just walk right through it. Fulgoreā€™s forward HP, Hisako and Orchid can Rekka through one. Nothing like dropping one to stop an advance just to have them walk through the web and pummel you until youā€™re dead and then the web finally opens up.

But I agree, fixing bugs isnā€™t about balance, but allowing a character to be able to perform the moves they were designed to be able to do.

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Glacius:

Pros:
-A fast forward advancing move which works as pseudo dash, is negative on block
-A projectile-invulnerable move that moves in any direction, but only short distances
-(Instinct only) A homing puddle punch which works as opener but is unsafe on block
-(Instinct only) Improved liquidize, which works greatly as mobility tool

Cons:
-Super slow walkspeed
-Useless forward dash, almost useless backdash
-Floaty jump, and no way to change his trajectory

Kan-Ra

Pros:

-Decent fowrad dash, good backdash
-Has a move that changes his jump trajectory, making him land quickly
-Can perform specials mid air, which halts him bierfly, allowing him to change his trajectory mid-air
-With sand, he can perform super jumps, which are fast and covers a lot of space
-With sand, his forward dash becomes a forward-low jump, allowing him to quickly close space
-With sand, he can teleport to it with sandsplosion, which works as a high recovery teleport
-During instinct, he can use all his sand moves without sand

Cons:
-Floaty jump, although he can change his trajectory
-Slow walkspeed, but faster than Glacius

Feel free to discuss it, but I find quite hard to challenge the idea that Kan-Raā€™s mobility is better than Glaciusā€™

Big hurbtox, bad mobility, lack of multi hitting moves to avoid armor and shadow counters, unsafe on block on most of his moves, his reversal is one of the easiest to bait among the castā€¦

Which boat? If we are speaking about ā€œsimilar tier placementsā€, I would say that Kim is in a great spot, upper mid tier

This is false. Kan-Ra is buggy because his archetype is hard to create without bugs. A simple character like Jago or Wulf has fewer bugs because there is no rocket science in most of what they do. Kan-Ra, meanwhile, has stay-on-screen projectiles, a sandtrap which works as anchor to his mobility and toolset, super jumps, the tools to convert a long range poke into a combo, a projectile which works as launcher, recaptures, flipouts, command grabsā€¦ there are so many things working on him. Thatā€™s the reason why he is so interesting, and also the reason why is he buggy, he is not buggy by design

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Serious queston to anyone who knows @Infilament @MnTLetalis @STORM179 what is the purpose on having attacks that are negative on hit?

Coud you name an example?

I think most moves probably shouldnā€™t be negative on hit. Usually the ones that end up being that way are developer oversights or some weird interaction.

I think itā€™s okay for some rare moves to be negative on hit, though. For example, SF4 Dhalsimā€™s slide is negative on hit unless spaced meaty, because the developers presumably wanted him to use the move for movement, and not as a way to maintain good offense. You can use the move in offense, but hit or block your turn is over.

In general I donā€™t think itā€™s a particularly great design philosophy though. And it also kind of depends on how your game handles frame data, whether itā€™s a SF-style game (like KI is) or whether you take an entirely different take on what plus/minus frames mean, like NRS games do.

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As someone who was a total masochist and mained Blanka in early SF4 I feel disgusted by that concept. I still have nightmares hitting the ball and eating a full ultra for it.

But I am curious what move you have in mind for Kan-Ra that behaves like this.

Im pretty sure air scarab is -26 on hit and whirl is -5 according to attack data

Actually there are a lot of openers in the game that are minus on hit (Raamā€™s light stab comes to mind if Iā€™m not mistaken) but because you can cancel them into the combo system, I think itā€™s not really too much of a concern. It would be different if KI had regular frame data around openers requiring you to link normals, but thatā€™s not the case here.

Air attacks being minus on hit is a little different of course.

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That depends on the hight.

I can trigger the combo system or at least manual with light attacks after hitting air swarm most of the time.
Of course if you hit Aganos at max hight or if you hit your opponents on the way up, you get hit. Especially when you hit with light normals. But this is true for every fighting game.

But you are right, whirl should be +on hit so we can manual. BUT, whirl also has a billion active frames for you to hit confirm into a linker.
So there is a workaround

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The only character kim wu canā€™t really fight is aganos. Other than that sheā€™s a higher tier character.

Glacius has plenty of weaknesses. Is he good? Yes. Very. But he still has weaknesses you can exploit. I.e. he canā€™t deal with someone like mira shadow jago or kilgore who counter both his zoning and trap tools. His dp is easy to bait and safe jump. He has a floaty jump and all of his long range normals can be hit out of. Heā€™s a pretty large character which leaves him more open to cross ups. Glacius does have alot going for him. But he still has weaknesses and characters that trash him.

Gargos nerfs over time have effectively made him a mid tier character at best much like kan is. I didnā€™t say he and cinder were in the same tier as cinder is easily one of the best characters in the game.

Now I agree that his bugs should get fixed. Everyoneā€™s should if they have them No one denies that. But the more complicated characters tend to have more and kan was made during a time where ig was still getting use to the system.

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Iā€™ve never understood the idea that a move should be punishable on hit. Infilā€™s Dhalsim slide rationale is probably the best reason Iā€™ve ever heard for it, but yeah, thereā€™s something pretty ā€œughā€ to me about getting punished for hitting someone. Zangiefā€™s green hand in SF4 is the move that first introduced the concept to me, as I asked around a few times what the heck was the purpose of a move that was punishable if it hit. Especially since one version of it (light?) wasnā€™t punishable on hit, I always wondered why would anyone ever do any other version of it.

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yea opener shadow scarab non ball has the same problem no way to manual with normals

Gief regular green hand was always punishable on hit until Ultra, thatā€™s the first time they made one of the versions safe on hit (the light version), which meant you could use it in combos. Before that you could never use the move except for positioning/movement.

It actually turned Gief into a monster of a character, since giving him a meterless confirm into point blank plus frames is a huge deal (before, he had to spend meter to do this ā€“ without meter he had to stop at the normals and do tick grabs or read an escape). Iā€™m not sure it was a particularly great change for the game, even though it ā€œmakes senseā€ that the move shouldnā€™t be unsafe on hit.

Itā€™s a tough one, because you could argue for it both ways. Maybe the fact that itā€™s such a strange move means that they designed it poorly from the start.

While Iā€™m here, here are some other minus-on-hit openers in KI that come to mind: Kilgore gun dash including shadow version, Kilgore metal ball (Iā€™m pretty sure), Hisako rekka (and shadow version too I think).

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You canā€™t manual after shadow ORZ, so I wouldnā€™t be surprised to find that itā€™s minus on hit. It is slightly plus on block though, which is an interesting mix of properties.

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good to know

@Infilament @STORM179 @MnTLetalis @lHagenl Guys I want to thank you all for walking me through these scenarios and situations. I understand better overall now that even these seemingly strange situations could have a purpose and that some other characters have some of these same issues.

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