I 100% agree that Kan-Ra needs 20% boost in meter gain on Normals which tie into my next buff:
Kan-Ra needs a trap reversal. If his Shadow Scarab remained on screen for 10 seconds again and travelled 25% faster it would get him out of pressure if set up correctly. Unlike other reversals he sacrifices meter for a future situation that might occur within 10secs. The damage and start-up of the move were nerfed but a good trade for that would be a return of its duration and an increase in speed. Its no get out jail free card but its a situational reversal. I like this ideaf for Shadow Scarab. Way way better than cutting it out the game.
P.S. I also 100% agree that Shadow Basun should revert to a regular sand trap if hit. So atleast he gets a sanplosion option if your shadow move was countered.
And also I dont think Shadow Whirl should be projectile invulnerable but rather it destroys basic hitbox projectiles. I think projectiles like Riptors (except Mortars), Kan-Ra, Tusk, and Orchidās Shadow Ichi should completely ignore Shadow Whirl but things like Jago, Shago, Spinal, and Fulgore (Except Devastation Beam) projectiles should be destroyed against a Shadow Whirl. I mean the tornado already does it, so does the kick normals, and the Ant-Lion/Stinger. However they cant beat Shadow projectiles which I think Shadow Whirl should do.
Kanra is a trap grappler that canāt probably trap you in Season 3 simply because summoning Swarms takes 20+ frames on wuff to form on the screen gives the opponent well enough time to punish you for summoning your only trapping mechanism with no meter which can be easily destroyed but any special/normal moves. Also meter gain could go up a pinch
That feature was a massive reason why Kan was so broken (yes, broken) in S2. Jump back normal->scarab->divekick was a way to apply pressure, put up a trap, and then largely protect himself from any reprisal, unless you had meter to projectile invincible your way through his sand upon landing. Kan-Ra shouldnāt have stupid pressure strings and ways to trap the field (while placing a sand pile) without exposing himself to at least some risk.
The two most important changes for Kan-Raās rebalance were the frame data nerf on scarabs (going negative instead of being weirdly and stupidly plus on block) and the limit to his aerial actions. Kan gets to make the opponent choose between literally unwinnable situations - he shouldnāt get to set those situations up for free. Iād take every single one of Sleepās requests over Kan-Ra getting aerial actions after scarabs again. It was ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā in S2, and itād be ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā now.
There is so much wrong here, I have to make a list
Ra was never broken. The only one who had good results with him constantly was @F3Sleep. And he is good with every Character he uses. I said that before but IMO not even his unbreakables were broken in S2ās context. He needed them to be viable because of how dangerous combo breakers were for him due to the knock downs in S2.
Would S2 Ra be broken in S3ās combo breaker contest? Maybeā¦
How do you aply pressure with jumping back?
Maybe with j.back.MK xx swarm, but the additional j.HK doesnāt make a difference here.
j.Hk takes forever to come out. Use it in the training mode. Ra will hop up a lil in the air and than dive down. He wonāt create a hitbox until he touches the ground. So if you can punish air scarabs now in S3, you were able to do the same in S2. It doesnāt matter if he uses j.HK or not. Doing both (get out a scarab and a trap) in 1 jump would help Raās defense more than his offense. Remember he is negative on almost everything in S3 so getting in and apply āstupid pressureā with him just doesnāt work with him anymore anyway.
[quote=āSTORM179, post:28, topic:11223ā]
Kan gets to make the opponent choose between literally unwinnable situations
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Thereās plenty to talk about kan-ra, although I feel I donāt know quite enough about him to give a well though out point on the subject. Just want to say that fulgore doesnāt make you choose between unwinnable situations if you know that matchup (which most people donāt).
Just because Sleep is the only one to win an offline tournament with someone doesnāt mean that character is automatically ok. If Cd Jr. hadnāt won EVO that first year, would that have meant S1 Sadira was fine as-is? If Nicky never wins an offline major, does that mean that Fulgore isnāt a ridiculously good character? And āIām bad on breakersā doesnāt give you license to be super-ridiculous in getting to avoid the combo game. Thatās a terrible argument.
By jumping back and pressing a button? Read what I said - I was describing a sequence, not an everpresent state of affairs. The instant overhead is the āpressureā part I was describing. And the additional HK was the whole reason that string was a thing - without meter, some characters had no way to reliably punish the dive kick, and missing the timing slightly would net you either a non-grounded touch for the punish or have you eating the shockwave before you could reach him. And yay, now Kan is on a pool of sand with a trap floating above him, and gets to do some ridiculous super jump shenanigan! Huzzah.
See above. But the larger point is that punishing air scarab now is materially different than it was in S2. Kan can no longer place one and then come down with anything thatās putting out any sort of hitbox whatsoever, nor can he change his jump arc at all. Thereās a world of difference between trying to wedge a punish between the gap in Kanās landing and the eruption of dive kick sand, and just tagging him as he floats to the ground after tossing out an air scarab at a bad range. Particularly if weāre talking about anything outside of high-level play. Iāll concede that S3 Kan simply isnāt capable of applying the same level of pressure as S2 Kan because of the changes to scarab frame data, but that puddle under him after placing a trap in the air still has offensive and mixup implications. And your protestations to the contrary, it really wasnāt the easiest punish in the world to get in the midst of a heated match.
Some characters in KI are ridiculous - Fulgore is certainly one of them. But youāre speaking as if Kan doesnāt also still have the ability to put opponents in lose/lose situations. He most certainly still does though! You (and the rest of the Kan team here) have found some of them!
I have the utmost respect for your play @lHagenl; I actually really love how the Kan-Ra sub-forum here is actively working to make their character better/more viable. And Iām not going to argue that Kan isnāt worse now than he was in S2 - he demonstrably is. But on the subject of whether Kan-Ra was āfairā or not in S2, weāll just have to agree to disagree. Thereās a reason there was such a huge outcry of hate against that character, and it wasnāt just because people werenāt willing to put in the work to try and find holes in his offense.
First things first. No offense to you and no disrespect. I agree that we have to agree to disagree lol.
EDIT: Getting knocked down with bad defense and bad wakeup whenever someone guessed right on a combo breaker was just bad design and I am glad IG fixed that.
I am sorry. he just puts you in his safe vortex where you have to guess left, right, low, overhead or throw just to guess right another time until he finally runs out pips.
He is horrible I know
But thatās not a Fulgore discussion here.
(please, if you have some tipps for that matchup, put it into the match up thread or show me the right direction if there are some good advises anywhere. Seriously)
The āIām bad on breakersā is āKanā speaking. I find the idea that because a character could get mauled after a breaker that he should be able to circumvent the combo system, shall we say, uncompelling. Getting broken by zoners also sucked, because they got space to back away and put more nonsense on the screen.
I mean absolutely no malice by this question and mean it in the nicest way possible but I am genuinely curious:
If Kan Ra was so broken and unfair in S2 how come he wasnāt winning more tournaments and more pros didnāt pick him up? Really the only pro I saw using him was @F3Sleep.
I know during S1 that I absolutely hated Orchid because I thought a lot of her moves were unfair. So I decided to try and play her and felt like I had a better understanding of the matchup. I actually started playing as her a lot of the time as well.
Lol. So I noticed We definitely agree that the S3 breakers are a better design decision all around. Encourages more of KIās very interesting neutral game.
@BubbRubb4Real - no offense taken. This is actually a discussion thatās being had now elsewhere on the forums regarding Fulgore. Hereās my take on it where it appeared there:
ā
āIf he was so good everyone would play himā is still a largely terrible argument. S2 Kan-Ra absolutely put people in ridiculous, unreasonable situations, and you still only saw about 3 Kanās at high level play, because hey, he was actually pretty darn tough to play at that level. On the other side of the ledger, seemingly 70% of TJās dropped the character like a bad habit the moment he was no longer able to roll his way to freedom for everything, even though TJās S3 offense is way better than it was at the end of S2. Thereās a lot to be said for character complexity influencing play.
Written in regards to Fulgore, but I think it also applies for why even at the height of his ridiculousness Kan-Ra wasnāt super heavily played at high level (there were still more Kanās than Fulgore though). Kan-Ra is hard to play at that super high tournament-winning level, and unlike Fulgore heās never had the defensive tools to just say āstopā if heās consistently finding himself in really bad spots.
By that thinking then shouldnāt every Top 8 just be filled with Jagos and Wulfs? Theyāre two characters that are known to be the easiest to learn for a new comer if Iām not mistaken.
āEasy to learn for a newcomerā isnāt the same as āeasy to play at high levelā. And you did see a ton of Wulfās in Top 8ās in KI, particularly near the start of the game. You also saw a lot of Sadiraās in S1 even before the unbreakables, because while she isnāt an āeasyā character to use necessarily, her gameplan even at high level was always pretty straightforward.
We definitely agree that the S3 breakers are a better design decision all around. Encourages more of KIās very interesting neutral game.