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 Orchid’s 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 can’t 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 shouldn’t 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-Ra’s 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 shouldn’t get to set those situations up for free. I’d take every single one of Sleep’s requests over Kan-Ra getting aerial actions after scarabs again. It was ■■■■■■■■ in S2, and it’d be ■■■■■■■■ 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 S2’s 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 S3’s combo breaker contest? Maybe…
How do you aply pressure with jumping back?
Maybe with j.back.MK xx swarm, but the additional j.HK doesn’t 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 won’t 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 doesn’t matter if he uses j.HK or not. Doing both (get out a scarab and a trap) in 1 jump would help Ra’s defense more than his offense. Remember he is negative on almost everything in S3 so getting in and apply “stupid pressure” with him just doesn’t work with him anymore anyway.
[quote=“STORM179, post:28, topic:11223”]
Kan gets to make the opponent choose between literally unwinnable situations
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There’s plenty to talk about kan-ra, although I feel I don’t know quite enough about him to give a well though out point on the subject. Just want to say that fulgore doesn’t make you choose between unwinnable situations if you know that matchup (which most people don’t).
Just because Sleep is the only one to win an offline tournament with someone doesn’t mean that character is automatically ok. If Cd Jr. hadn’t 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 isn’t a ridiculously good character? And “I’m bad on breakers” doesn’t give you license to be super-ridiculous in getting to avoid the combo game. That’s 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 “pressure” 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 that’s putting out any sort of hitbox whatsoever, nor can he change his jump arc at all. There’s a world of difference between trying to wedge a punish between the gap in Kan’s 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 we’re talking about anything outside of high-level play. I’ll concede that S3 Kan simply isn’t 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 wasn’t 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 you’re speaking as if Kan doesn’t 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 I’m not going to argue that Kan isn’t worse now than he was in S2 - he demonstrably is. But on the subject of whether Kan-Ra was “fair” or not in S2, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. There’s a reason there was such a huge outcry of hate against that character, and it wasn’t just because people weren’t 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 that’s 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 “I’m bad on breakers” is “Kan” 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 wasn’t winning more tournaments and more pros didn’t 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 KI’s very interesting neutral game.
@BubbRubb4Real - no offense taken. This is actually a discussion that’s being had now elsewhere on the forums regarding Fulgore. Here’s my take on it where it appeared there:
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“If he was so good everyone would play him” is still a largely terrible argument. S2 Kan-Ra absolutely put people in ridiculous, unreasonable situations, and you still only saw about 3 Kan’s 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 TJ’s dropped the character like a bad habit the moment he was no longer able to roll his way to freedom for everything, even though TJ’s S3 offense is way better than it was at the end of S2. There’s 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 wasn’t super heavily played at high level (there were still more Kan’s than Fulgore though). Kan-Ra is hard to play at that super high tournament-winning level, and unlike Fulgore he’s never had the defensive tools to just say “stop” if he’s consistently finding himself in really bad spots.
By that thinking then shouldn’t every Top 8 just be filled with Jagos and Wulfs? They’re two characters that are known to be the easiest to learn for a new comer if I’m not mistaken.
“Easy to learn for a newcomer” isn’t the same as “easy to play at high level”. And you did see a ton of Wulf’s in Top 8’s in KI, particularly near the start of the game. You also saw a lot of Sadira’s in S1 even before the unbreakables, because while she isn’t an “easy” 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 KI’s very interesting neutral game.