Kim wu is too low tier

Its also weird that Spinal gets good damage when he does his skull/resource ender and cashing out a level 3/4 ender with Kim grants you almost zero damage. Spinal even gets multiple of his resources.

Clearly they think Spinal needs skulls more than Kim Wu needs dragons, and that a dragon is much more dangerous than a skull. It’s not clear to me why, but it’s probably a discussion worth having.

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Dragons are def not as good as Spinal’s skulls.

Seems like her Shadow Dragon Kick should be projectile invincible.

Ex:
Orchid attacking me on wake up. I make the read and shadow dragon kick for reversal. First hit connects, and then a firecat comes and knocks me out of the second hit and Orchid gets to full combo me. WTF.

-Being able to use Dragon Cannon anytime you have a dragon would be good. (not just reflect and instinct)

-LK Dragon Kick could be slightly faster to punish certain things such as orchid’s grenade on reaction. Right now she can block. Its like that with many characters.

-Her Dragon cancel could be a few frames faster as well. Playing some sets at TX Showdown, players said they could mostly react to it. I’m not sure if that’s true or if its just the “tell” that you are about to use it from the move before it
*LK Dragon Kick, DC, mix up
*FK Dragon Kick ambiguous cross up, DC, FP as you descend from the air
*Jump just out of cross up range, air DC, FP as you descend

It depends on what you are doing. Maybe people are doing it after certain times? VERY Seldom, I’ll burn a Shadow move, and Purposely Whiff it into a dragon cancel to set something up. Even during a Combo, I’ll dragon cancel to bait a reset, or to get a mixup. I use Dragons a lot, and make sure I have at LEAST 1 stocked at all times. She gets them really easy, so why not use them? :smile:

A lot of these are kinda reactable yes, especially the Dragon Kicks into DC, because Kim’s Dragon Kick is Highly Unsafe, so if you have a Dragon, you must cancel, or suffer getting hit. Or the Heavy Dragon Kick into DC, as that leaves her up in the air for a while, which is enough time for someone to DP or AA you out of the air.

I’m not sure. Do you mean the mechanic as a whole of each dragon? Spinal’s skulls are dangerous in different ways. I think the best use of a skull is to move cancel. A single skull fireball is not great. But if you have two or three you can do some stuff. So he definitely needs a few.

I’m being perfectly honest when I say I don’t understand Kim’s dragons. I know that the devs must of had a reason for this. I don’t understand dragon cannon only in instinct. It doesn’t seem that OP to me that it should be that limited. But surely the devs thought so. So again, I’m wondering why. What would be a good argument for making dragon cannon instinct only?

IMO they were clearly scared of dragons being too good. That’s why you only get 1 from the battery ender, why they don’t recharge in instinct as you’re getting beat up (and take a pretty long time to charge), and why a lot of stuff is minus after you use it. It makes sense why they would think this, it’s basically a ground and air FADC that works on whiff, and I’m sure they didn’t want Kim to end up like S2 launch Maya or something where they underestimated the strength of certain techniques. If they made a mistake with dragons, Kim would be really stupid to play against, because everything would be dragon canceled.

I think if they decide to adjust Kim a bit moving forward, they can do so easily without reworking much of her at all. But she is probably also a character that doesn’t get played “the right way” a lot of the time, so it might take a bit of time for the truth to come out whether “the right way” is good enough for her to survive in KI S3 or not.

I think she’s in a bit tough, though. I think she has some really difficult weaknesses to overcome long term (compared to what other members of the cast can do) and her strengths aren’t as overwhelming as perhaps they need to be. But this is a gut reaction from seeing Kim played and understanding the ecosystem of KI
 I haven’t played much as, or against, Kim personally.

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If you mind me asking, what is the way you think Kim should be played, knowing her abilities and such? I really see her as more of a Whiff-Punisher, a character designed to make you stop pushing buttons, and making you play her game.

I see a lot of Kim players try to go in up close and personal to set something up, or play her like a rushdown (which she can), but I feel like she excels just outside of her opponent’s normals, play hard footsies, and dance around the maximum range of attacks, to where she on a good read, catch a Backdashing Opponent or a character trying to set up something.

With Dragon Cancels, this can add a ton of ambiguous setups and such to help Kim close in that gap, in case she needed it. Like If I was to be dancing around max range, I could Dragon Cancel into Dragon Grasp, and start there.

I wouldn’t say that being last on the tier list makes a character non-viable. After all some character has to be last. What’s important is that the tier list is compressed enough that even the character who is last on the tier list can win in tournament.

I’m not sure if Killer Instinct has that. But the fact that you have combo breakers and counterbreakers certainly makes the game more read based and can allow weaker characters to thrive.

Still I’m a little bummed that they didn’t even remove the firecracker gap. But the change to shadow counter does fix one of the big holes in her game. Also the Rash nerfs do at least make that matchup a lot better so that’s one losing match she might go even in now.

-Allow Kim to Dragon Cancel out of a parry
(IF you already have a dragon stocked!)

Hisako can parry and go straight into a combo


Hisako is a different character with a completely different play style. It’s not relevant to compare a single aspect of the character and complain about that.

I think this is inherently the problem. Rhetorically speaking, Why is there only ‘1 good way’ to win as Kim?? Take a character like Jago, where you can do rushdown style, zoning style, jumping style, whatever style you want, and be decent. But if we try to go gangbusters rushdown with Kim we’re dead. a couple of missed dragon kick punishes, missed firecrackers, we’re dead again. wtf bogus design if there’s only 1 viable way to play as her

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I don’t think shes underpowered. I just think that she’s poor visually and janky, like an MK character. Nothing she does looks hype, and even when I’m playing against a good Wu, nothing stands out as “Wow! That was awesome!”. She’s just not exciting enough to warrant a character slot in her current form.

EXACTLY.

it’s sad cause she really was awesome in all other ways.

I dunno, can you play Sabrewulf as a zoner? This comment to me kind of sounds like you just want Kim to be good at everything, as opposed to quite good at one thing and worse at some other things. There are characters in the game that do that (Fulgore, Jago, others) but definitely not all, and there are several characters in KI that “need to be played 1 way” to have success.

The question to think about is, is Kim good enough at the thing she is designed to be really good at? It’s not “do I like the thing Kim is designed to be good at” or “does the thing Kim is good at match my personal playstyle.”

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Ok, so it’s not just Kim, still goes back to a fundamental design problem of why this noticeable percentage of the roster is locked into one playstyle. And yes, characters should be well-rounded enough where a player can come in and play them in their own way, leading to gameplay and tech that evolves over time

So you want everybody to be Jago? I don’t really understand.

Part of the fun of fighting games is the extreme archetypes. Zangief can’t be a good zoner. Dhalsim can’t have the best up-close defense. If you prefer to play certain types of characters, maybe these guys aren’t your best choices and that’s fine.

If everybody is “kind of good” at everything then it’s just a bland soup.

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actually it’d be KI2 :stuck_out_tongue: it never really gets old

I’m not sure you’re helping your cause here! lol

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I know competitive people look down on that game because it was too equalized but that thing was awesome in my book for the same reason