My Take on Dagger Assault

Characters Maya
1

Unlike a lot of players out there, I am able to look past the risks this move has and see the kind of fun I can have with it. I use this move often just to see what I can do with it, and I don’t really mind getting hit out if it considering pips aren’t too hard to obtain, nor are they all that necessary to make the move work. I’ve seen clips of the move being used by PinkDiamond (no one else really) who makes it look really good.

However, like a lot of Maya players, these amazing moments of doing anything more than 30% off it (which is what I’d get for the same meter cost and a simple knockdown ender) are too few and far between. Because of it’s high risk and questionable reward (not gonna straight up claim that the reward sucks, there could always be something I’m missing) the developers have been balancing it to make it more easy to initiate. These changes were increasing your advantage upon activation, as well as making the first dagger hit much faster.

But while it’s nice they’re trying, I personally don’t think this is the right way to balance it.

Like I’ve mentioned, I’m not averse to taking high risks for sake of reaping potential enjoyment and rewards. But unfortunately, 99% of cases, I’m not getting much of the latter. Assuming I manage to get an opening, I start a combo where the daggers cause kv to skyrocket, heavy damage scaling and shadow linkers to be far easier to break. Assuming I spend a good amount of meter or do a ton of heavy manuals, I’m getting 40% max. And there are much easier ways of getting that damage with similar resource cost. I’m aware I could do a ton of resets to try and subvert the scaling, but by doing so I risk losing the dagger assault, and even with the fancy cross up stuff Maya’s not a reset god like Hisako or Thunder is.

However, while I believe this move could use some more appeal, I could also see how that could be very dangerous. Imagining a game where the daggers didn’t go away if Maya was hit is just a nightmare. One-way interaction out the window as players would be stuck as Maya hops over them over and over again unless a move hits.

You guys have been trying to make this move more appealing by lowering the risk. But I think what would be a better idea is increasing the reward instead.

Have the daggers scale less. Make them add less kv. Make them build more meter. Or maybe some other creative advantage to using it. I’m open to ideas.

I hope you guys consider this suggestion :wink:

4 Likes
2

Sounds reasonable to me… :grin:

3

But…the question is…

Do you have friends on the other side?

4

Agreed, though I love the idea, as it stands Dagger Assault isn’t doing too much to favor reward as much as it has an abundance of risk. Some slight alteration to the move enabling the player to benefit more from using it will definitely improve her potential.

I’m by no means a Maya expert nor am I even close to being good with her, but too often have I seen this move fail in situations where I made the right read. Building pips aren’t too hard, well in some situations it might be, but again just my perspective based on the time where I used her at a serious level.

Point is, increase the potential of this move where it doesn’t seem all that bad to spend my pips over an unblockable. It has great potential, just missing some tweaks to make it be worth using despite the risk.

5

First time I’ve posted on this forum but I thought I’d chime in with my thoughts. I’ve player ki since release and I mained Maya from season 2 up until season 3, I still use Maya occasionally but she feels incomplete and is no where near the beast she was in season 2, I learned how to use tusk in less than a day and I was winning more games despite my experience with maya. Im not gonna sugar coat it, dagger assault is useless. For starters the ender barely does any damage, it can be easily broken, there is no reason to be using this ender over other enders. I don’t know the logic behind adding dagger assault, the community knows its garbage because no one uses it. I would prefer the older dagger ender back but with a damage reduction if that was a problem. Leapkicks need reworking too, they shouldnt magnet towards the opponent, the light kick isn’t too bad, the medium could be a tad bit higher, the hard leapkick should be higher and go over the opponent. Another thing I would like to see change to is leapkick on wakeup, I understand it was kind of op before as you could leapkick, throw a dagger and recapture, if they blocked you could just keep doing this until they didn’t. But now most instances leapkick can be too risky to use, most of the time the opponent blocks then punishes you when you land. I think it would be good to be able to do a kick on the way down from leapkick, or be able to throw a dagger after leapkick block at the cost of pip meter.

1 Like
6

This isn’t a discussion about how good Maya is, or her leap kicks. I know it’s your first time on the forums, but please try to stay on topic. This topic is about dagger assault.

They did it because it’s a more utility based move that capitalizes on Maya’s abilities (juggles, mobility) rather than a stupid one chance 50% that drove her playstyle down the drain and made her a good character for all the wrong reasons.

The community is averse to a lot of risky things, that doesn’t mean they’re right.

2 Likes
7

No. They did it because of personal feelings of one dev. No one asked for this move and no one was complaining about Maya’s playstyle.

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There’s an entire team of devs who work specifically on combat design.

[quote=“khronosix, post:7, topic:16740”]
no one was complaining about Maya’s playstyle.
[/quote]Maya in S2 was nothing but dagger throws and one chance 50%. It was stupid and boring to watch.

4 Likes
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“Please try to stay on topic. This topic is about dagger assault.”

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You’re right, I’m not here to debate S2 Maya either. So I’m gonna end this dumb conversation because I’m wasting my time with you.

1 Like
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Re: OP
I agree wholeheartedly.

As a spectator S2, Maya made the game look bad, playing every match virtually identically. I’m glad she was the exception, else I wouldn’t have gotten as invested in the greatest game I’ve ever played.

I only mention it to highlight the fact that her old Dagger Ender had to go. Maybe they could have done something else, but the old one was bad for the game.

13

Regarding Dagger Assault and the topic of risk-vs-reward, I feel that Maya sacrifices TOO much with her daggers in using the Ender. The fact that her daggers separate regardless of action puts her at her weakest and makes it more difficult for her to continue her offense. While an element of this risk SHOULD persist, I feel like the reward of this ender should not just be a short time to perform a mixup but also put Maya back into fighting form. Therefore I have the following recommendations for Dagger Assault:

  • Have the daggers build a pip each time they hit the blocked opponent, like whenever Maya normally throws her dagger.

  • Have the daggers immediately return to Maya’s hands should she manage to enter the combo system before the daggers separate.

With these changes, Maya is now encouraged to more heavily open her opponent up while he/she is dealing with the daggers above them. It puts them in a dangerous situation where the daggers may earn up to 5 pips just by blocking to make up for how little damage the ender itself does. This also pressures Maya to actually get her attacks in and combo going. If she does, the daggers return to her right away and she regains all her tools. If she doesn’t, she has no daggers (though they’ll still have pips) and will have to regain them the hard way.

Any thoughts on this?

14

This sounds like such a no-brainer.

Rebuilding pips, I’m not sure about - I don’t like the sound of spending a resource to gain back that resource. It’s like if Fulgore gained spin for connecting w/ fireball>teleport>stuff (a hyperbolic illustration, but it gets my point across fundamentally).

1 Like
15

Then repeated dagger assaults with extra pips would would allow her to keep an offense ball rolling a very long time. A bit too long in my opinion.

But wouldn’t that destroy the point of resets? I never said I didn’t want them.

I respect your opinion, but once again IMO increasing the reward > lowering the risk.

16

That’s a good point. That actually gives her kind of a absurd vortex game in a game where vortexes are VERY powerful. Perhaps instead the length of her Dagger Assault ender is dependent on how high a KV level she built up? So that her pips don’t determine the length at all and pressures Maya players to risk longer combos in order to have a better chance of not losing her daggers via a failed Dagger Assault followup.

17

I wrote this in the idea that it would increase the reward without lowering the risk, via punishing Maya all the same if she can’t get her combo going but rewarding her with pips and her daggers back if she did.

As for her resets… To be honest I haven’t figured out a tidy way that she could still execute resets yet not completely lose her daggers regardless of her mixups and combos. I think a better way might be for her daggers to return to her hands at the END of its cycles if she got a combo going. This way, so long as she got a combo going and executed resets, she’d still have them once the daggers were done their turn. If she hadn’t got the combo in, then they separate as usual.

18

What about a manual retrieval input? Like dd.LP would retrieve LDagger, dd.MP would retrieve MDagger, and dd.HP would retrieve both? Could that work? Let the move otherwise work as normal (@SonicDolphin117’s suggested changes to KV and scaling applying, of course).

I actually think this idea (manual retrieval) has been suggested before, perhaps by @DEClimax?

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At what cost? A dagger pip, 2% Instinct, 1/4th Shadow meter?
Or exclusively after Dagger Assault ender?
I ask only because a manual retrieval command seems like it would be crazy good for her unless it had a drawback.

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It’s just a buff to dagger assault.

21

OH SNAP MY BAD!

I meant manual retrieval exclusively from the combo system and only while DA is active - given the requisites, I would say at no cost. You would have to first open the opponent up w/ DA active before it becomes an option.

Or maybe not even from the combo system? Would being able to pull a dagger out of an active DA or effectively cancel DA be too good?

1 Like