I have been playing Kan Ra in ranked and though it is a bit of a struggle, I am still doing fine. the Flip outs’ are probably doing me the most good, so try to make use of them a bit more. I know you are concerned about Ra, but it hasn’t even been a week yet. Just give it some time.
So I have been playing Kan Ra in gold rank and I finally have to admit, I am struggling. I think I am going for too many resets and not focusing on flat out damage. My defense is also pretty lacking & I have been finding that the lack of a 6 or 7 frame normal with decent range is killing me. So for all of my defending S3 Kan Ra, even I must admit the struggle is real… for now…
The struggle has always been real in Killer rank.
Kan-Ra has never been very viable. Yes I said that. We had one (!!) player who did very well with him and that is Sleep. But he does well with every character because of individual godlikeness. He says he will always play Kan, but lately he switched to Aria and Glacius in every tournament only releasing the mummy in certain match ups.
Kan was not viable because (and I am skipping the everybody-can-get-in-on-him-for-free-at-least-twice-a-match part) it was way too dangerous to do anything without a trap on the ground. If you lost that 10 frame (lol) reversal every combo breaker could mean the end for you. And I am happy they changed the CB system.
But for what cost? He lost the damage, he lost the setups, he lost the frame advantage.
Okay, he often did not play KI. The unbreakables had to be dealt with. But IMO he needed them at that time, because of how dangerous CBs were for him. It was the only nerf he needed after changing the CB system.
Everything else is just to much and nobody ever asked for them.
On the bright site, his new shadow spike is very fun to mess around with. It has potential.
He still won’t be a ‘solid’ character and as of right now I wouldn’t recommend him to anybody.
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Kan Ra in a nutshell:
High risk low reward. He’s too risky and unsafe to play at a high level now, and the rewards pale in comparison to the effort required. still a great character when lacking MU knowledge but yeah, he shall remain a pocket char for most tournament goers after the changes. What people are failing to understand is that Kan Ra has always been a poverty char, he always had to work super hard to set things up and you always had to play with minimal mistakes. If he was so OD and amazing, more people would have flocked to him and we would have seen multiple people winning with Kan Ra’s left and right.
Some of the balancing decisions IG has made with S3 have left me scratching my head. Poorly thought out is an understatement. Speaks alot about their philosophies and FG experience.
All I believe Kan Ra needs to compete is better frame data on his normals. Allow him to play the neutral game and control space with his limbs. Less recovery and startup on his long ranged pokes. Having to control space and pacing via scarabs or shadow trap is not viable in the long run, especially now.
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I am actually going to be streaming in about 30 minutes, using Kan Ra, Aganos, and Omen in Gold tier rank. Feel free to stop by
This isn’t a very good argument. Fulgore is widely acknowledged to be the best character in the game, but there are what, a grand total of two of them that you see played at high level? And one of those only as a counter pick by someone who plays half the cast?
Good characters can remain unplayed or underexplored if the conditions are right. Incidentally, I actually agree with you that Kan was very hard to play at high level - that doesn’t change the fact that once at that level, he was absolutely insane.
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Is it me, or does cursing players seem to give Kan faster meter build??? I’ve been playing tons of matches, and even watching other Kan-Ra players on streams, and it just seems that somehow Kan is able to build meter really fast enough to use Shadow Sand Spike consistently.
I haven’t had a chance to test this theory yet. I’m just curious as to your guys’ thoughts on this.
Can’t test right now. Might just be additional meter gain from blocked or hitting shadow spike strikes.
Currently testing things out right now… It seems like Kan-Ra gets a bit more meter, not counting the shadow spikes, but it’s not really noticeable imo…
Also, for some reason, crossing up with j.MK into shadow air scarab makes him fall back down in the same direction he jumped… You’ll see him do shadow air scarab facing the direction he came from, and land on that exact side. Was this possible in S2??? Just curious…
boy this character took some L’s!!! but he freaking fun as AF to play though… Does enhanced air swarm still work if you cancel into from jumping HK/HP?
btw fighting shadow jago is a nightmare for Kan Ra… and I hate losing to those types of players because they love doing double ultras
Most Shagos tend to use unsafe moves such as near full screen slides, random dive kicks, all which are punishable. Keeping them cursed is what I do, making it easier to read their bad habits. Even against a good shago, keeping them cursed will make the fight alot more easier.
A command grab after a shadow spike is in play, doubles the damage of the command grab also so use that if you want to cheese out a win, lol.
Hey guys how you liking the KanRa Changes!!!
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I still think he’s viable. Just trickier to manuever since you can’t cancel air swarm anymore.
His Shadow Clutch Went from 19% to 13% but if used after Back-Heavy Punch it does 23%. So…I don’t know. The message is “Set-Ups”? I suppose.
Think he was nerfed too hard. It was fine that they got rid of some of his gimmicky setups, but now he does too little damage for the opportunities that he has to work harder to achieve.
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I don’t know, the way the meta revolved around Kan Ra was that the character was huge on set up. Even if damage was reduced. If you’re stil keeping space and chipping at the opponent and punishing mistakes, you are still doing significant damage over time.
I completely agree with you. They over nerf kanra and in a stacked pool in tournament he will not be viable at all simply because all his previous bad mu are almost impossible to deal with. Also shadow swarm is the new shadow spike you want being seeing this move used alot because how bad it is one startup and smaller hitboxs. But i haven’t gave up yet on him even with all the lack of tools
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Idk I think you guys still have a solid character.