No one is talking about how useless shadow scarab is now. Has anyone found a use for it? Seems Kan got his useless shadow spike fixed somewhat and had to trade in his shadow scarab. Sucks how even throw tech or getting combo broken will erase shadow spike and leave you stuck without a reversal
1 Like
every time I use shadow swarm I do it because my hands are stupid and they think itās still S2.
Itās not even like this move is worthless but shadow spike is just soooo much better.
1 Like
No one is really afraid of Shadow Scarab anymore. Characters like Rash can zipline it in one hit, and fill their meter. It doesnāt really do much damage either. I could see if Shadow Scarab had the same buff that Shadow Spike did, then I could understand the damage nerf. From that point, the question then becomes āWhy doesnāt Kan-Ra build enough meter?āā¦
I try to use Shadow Scarab as a means of changing the jump trajectory. For instance, doing j.MK immediately while jumping forward, then cancelling into Shadow Scarab will make Kan-Ra land in the same spot he started at. Test it out.
3 Likes
Kan-Ra is a zoner. His frame traps are in his spacing. He is not a rushdown character, he shouldnt have anything that is positive enough to be a block string or frame trap. He has normals that reach like ice lance with differing strengths. Pretty hard to press buttons after one of those and not eat the next one. People gotta learn to play zoner spacing kan ra.
Kan-Ra was op. He was a zoner with free setups and some of the best if not the best rushdown pressure in the game. No zoner should have good rushdown. Specially not one with a ranged opener that can only be jumped out of to eat damage anyway. Yes, op was the right title.
1 Like
donāt feed the troll
2 Likes
So I fought a Kan ra yesterday. I fight a few of them however this one unlike most of them this Kan ra knew what they were doing. For the amount of combos he did I kept thinking "thatās it? " 
I know Kan ra is not a high damage character even in S2 but yikes. I feel bad for Kan ra players.
Never thought the day would come when I heard sympathy for Kan DyingAlloy Iām a fan of yours now
1 Like
So remember that ātrickā I was talking about where you can do a timed j.MK into Shadow Scarab, and land back where you started? Well, it turns out you have to do Shadow Scarab right above the opponentās head when you do it.
It gets better.
With a sand trap out, you can super jump, and no matter how high you are, the trick still works, as long as you do Shadow Scarab above their head.
It gets a bit more better.
Because of the super jump, after doing Shadow Scarab, Kan-Ra falls at the same speed he jumps, so this can allow him to act faster somewhat. So you can do things like this in theory:
SJ, j.MK~Shadow Scarab, land, b+HP (stagger), b+HP (stagger), cr.HP~LK Sand Spike, (Shadow Scarab hits), qcf+LP (recapture), HP auto~Shadow Clutch = 40%
Obviously the combo can be broken on d+HP initially, but if the opponent is locked out, the whole combo is guaranteed. The cr.HP can be slightly delayed to force a CB. You can also opt out to use the regular clutch ender instead of Shadow Clutch for less damage.
Another thing I found interesting in this combo is that using qcf+HP does that weird stun that puts the opponent at a distance for the combo to be continued with st.HP.
@JINXHAND please post this stuff in the setup thread. Will check it out later. Sounds cool btw.
On topic:
Yep as expected, they nerfed Ra again by removing his bugs.
No shadow trap clutch buff anymore.
Swarm got nerfed HEAVILY (l.swarm -3 instead of -1). Jagos who know this will just DP you.
What did we get?
More damage on trap strikes.
h.swarm now -1 (I never used that move before in strings)
Flipouts are equalized (I hope we can clutch everyone now after flipout. Might as well be, we canāt clutch anyone after flip out, who knowsā¦)
Thatās it.
I am disappointed
1 Like
Oops, didnāt necessarily mean to go into that much detailā¦ I wasnāt sure if the gimmick was S3 specific or not, hence the original postā¦
Last post copied to setup thread, with a bit more info. For some reason, I canāt delete my last postā¦ 
Shadow scarabs now is more like a slow moving projectile meant to apply mid screen pressure, not up close pressure. I will admit that the much longer start up makes the move harder to use & its not nearly as useful as it was in Season 2
It may not be much, but the damage boost on anti-air sting and the equalizing of flip outs are HUGE for me personally. I was sick of not being able to use my new setups on Glacius (floaty little bugger).
What if they made it so that shadow swarm could apply a curse? That would bring back some utility. Also (to compensate for what a huge buff this would be) what if they made it so the swarm ender only spawned a normal swarm, not a shadow one?
I originally thought that Shadow Scarab was supposed to do that due to its look with the blue glow.
What would be cool is if he had at least one way to do an air scarab while grounded like Dhalsimās anti-air fireball. Like make it more of a burst than an actual scarab that just sits there.
On a side note, db+HP needs a attack box buff imo. That alone would make Shago matches more reasonableā¦
1 Like
yep, cr.HK and db.HP are kinda useless in the corner vs Shago j.HP.
I tried to beat repetitive j.HPs in the lab but the timing is very strict. Anti Airing Shago is just not reliable
1 Like
For anyoneās interest I found that after the jumping Dune instead of going for the weak Whirl and potentially have the hesitation problem that I was having its really easy just to do a LP manual or a MK manual into weak whirl.
Could be a bit of a problem if our opponents catch onto that though.
Thread renamed to āgeneral discussionā because it makes more sense to me at the moment.
I hate Kan-Ra. He is the worst character in KI. Nerfed him completely. I know I said this already but I finally made up my honest opinion. Why I still play him? Heās the only character I learned so much back in S2. Now I donāt want to play him anymore cause I donāt have time to re-learn everything.
There was 1 Kan-Ra in top 8 in both tournaments this weekend. Unfortunately I only saw matches were they loose. KingEZ just lost becaus he was playing Ra like itās S2. He wasted meter on shadow swarm and killed his own shadow traps. It was painful to watch, because he played well besides this. It was the same thing with that Japanese Ra.
You can not waste your shadow traps! Itās the best move in the game! Seriously