My Thoughts on 3.4

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Hello everyone, today I’d like to give my thoughts overall about the current version of KI or (3.4).

Overall I was pretty impressed with a lot of the changes that patch 3.4 brought to the game as a lot of it were things influenced or brought up by the community. The developers have hinted that they aren’t done yet and there is still more to come which is a good thing because there are just a few more things I’d personally love to see get addressed as well but nonetheless this patch was a huge step in the right direction.

Below you can find the remaining characters I feel still need some tweaking while others whom I have omitted form this list are most likely balanced in my opinion or are in a good spot and don’t require any real changes or tweaks.

Jago

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Quite honestly my problems with Jago were never really spawned from his high damage although it was kind of weird that going into S3 everyone else was hit with damage nerfs except him so I guess 10% decrease to his damage enders were warranted but not necessarily needed in my opinion.

His real problem for me comes down to instinct…

  • double fireballs
  • meter gain
  • chip damage
  • unbreakables
  • health gain
  • frame advantage
    …its just too much
    My only change to Jago would be to take away his frame advantage in instinct. Characters without reversal struggle against him but that change would probably make him more manageable for those characters. This change would also make his 50/50 overhead/low mixup easier to deal with and wouldn’t lead to more free health gain; he needs to earn it and having constant frame advantage all but guarantees hes going to open you up at some point and during that time already built two bars.

Thunder

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I feel he is in a pretty good spot right now and for the most part manageable. My only issue with him currently is his ability to dropkick and skyfall at any distance off the ground. This causes a very hard to react/deal with mixup at all times because it can be very difficult anti-air him from that angle. Giving him a height restriction on these two follow ups would force to him commit and no longer put players in a “forever” mixup every time he does a DP. It would also keep this move in line with other restrictions for other characters like Mantis on Maya and Shadow Lazer on fulgore etc.

I’m also not a fan of Ankle Slicer, Thunder players seem to just throw this move out without repercussions because it’s un-punishable. The heavy version is only -5 coupled with the pushback make this move practically safe which is a little much considering it’s a half screen low crush.

Orchid

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I was glad Orchid didn’t receive any changes going into 3.4 as I feel she is probably the most balanced character in the game right now. While I still don’t agree with air throw being breakable it’s still hard to argue that fact that this is kind of made her juggle combos useless to some extent. I can still get all the same vortex and setup potential from grenade without having to do any juggles or launcher ender at all. This coupled with the fact her juggles build absolutely no potential damage and cash out for minuscule amounts I just don’t see the reason to play 50/50s on breakers and wasting shadow meter on that stuff when I can just go for hard knock down/exchange ender for guaranteed oki. The air target combos don’t provide anyway around this either because they both end in heavy so there is no real mixup or reason to do them.

Not much to note here but just an observation.

Shadow Jago

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In my most humble opinion I feel Shadow Jago is a little undertuned right now and was probably over nerfed in the past. He feels like no matter how hard he works he doesn’t get a real reward out of it. A slight 5-10% damage increase would probably serve him well.

KanRa

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For the longest time people were saying he was weak in S3 but I’m glad people are finally starting to make him shine again especially Fubuki and Sleep as he one of the coolest original KI characters to date (Sako still the coolest) Currently I believe KanRa is fair and balanced outside of a few needed bug fixes( I even had a safe counter breaker done to me the other day).

My only real concern about Ra is that he seems be the only character who is still by passing the universal rule of having everything be breakable; of course I’m talking about his sand trap recapture. I’m not really sure why hes an exception to this rule of recaptures being all breakable except his. Allowing him to do mid-combo unbreakable recaptures is rather silly and is leading to some weird situations. I feel that if everyone else have to play 50/50s on recaptures than so should he especially with Orchid’s air throw and Gargos air throws being breakable; he would function just fine with this restriction in place.

Omen

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This character is absurdly strong this season no matter how many people are actively playing him hes definitely always a threat. The change to his fireballs never going away on hit was a really strong change for him. Quite honestly I am perfectly okay with Omen for the most part however I feel him always having meter is a bit too strong at the moment. Basically always having meter has allowed him to constantly be safe on everything which allows for few punish opportunities. I feel omen should probably have his meter gain reduced a bit or perhaps have him go down to 2 bars of meter like everyone else. His pressure game is way to strong a moment and I feel this would alleviate it to tolerable levels.

Aria

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I know I’m not alone when I say that Aria is still absurdly difficult to break. With her very ambiguous grenade linkers and medium punch doubles that look like lights we see Aria players abuse these two things in tandum which allows her to get away with a lot a free damage. I would like to see this addressed in some way so that I’m not constantly having to guess what in the heck she is doing; otherwise Aria is fine for me balance wise.

Mira

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I’m not really sure whats wrong with this character and I’m sure everyone will disagree with me on this but I don’t think this character is very good or reliable for that matter. Her risk reward just ins’t there and probably should be re-evaluated in my opinion. I’ve never lost a set to any of the top mira players and I always felt bad for winning because they controlled the beginning of the match I hit them with 1 auto double and they were dead. Health management is one thing but I’m not sure what the problem is with her. Just my two cents.

Kim Wu
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Again if I didn’t mention a character here it’s because I feel they are balanced or in a pretty good spot this season. Great job to both IG and MS. Season3 was off to a shaky start for me but it’s shaping up to be as good if not better than S2 was near the end. I look forward to what the future holds and of course the KI World Cup!

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Jago: No doubt his instinct is incredibly strong, and one of the best in the game (can you believe that people used to say Jago’s instinct was useless for several months at the start of season 2?). If they’re going to change something, I hope it’s very small, though. Maybe 10% reduction to shadow fireball damage or something so that the non-cashout damage isn’t quite as high, but I’d be fine if they didn’t change this either. I would prefer if they didn’t change the +2 frame advantage in instinct. I like the game when Jago is strong.

Shago: I do agree he might be a little undertuned but not by much. There’s dirt there that people will find, especially if they start playing Jago-like footsies with the character instead of always committing to specials. A 5% damage buff doesn’t sound too bad to me, though, but it can’t be very much.

Kan-Ra: I think his antlion needs to be unbreakable, because unlike other characters who have to play 50-50s with their recaptures, Kan can’t really do anything else after command throw except recapture (they’ve been slowly taking away all his other setups there). He can’t mix up strengths or cash out with shadow something against an airborne opponent like Cinder, TJ, Orchid etc can do, and all those characters can also go into knockdowns into mixups as well. Kan’s options are pretty limited there, even with flipout.

The way I think about it is, the antlion just means the command throw goes into a grounded combo (kind of like Hisako wrath) if Kan has set up sand before he grabs you (ie, if Hisako has full wrath when she grabs you). If you make the antlion breakable, Kan is considerably worse IMO, because not only does he need to set up sand + land a command grab, but now he has to play a counter breaker game with no other meaningful options for converting the damage.

Omen: No doubt, he is one of the best chars this patch. I’d like to see him keep his 3 meters and his pretty good neutral. I was always nervous about the “shadow fireballs don’t go away” thing… but maybe they think it’s too late to take that from him now. There are small things they can do to him, but Omen has seen quite a few reductions since the start of S3 so they just need to decide on a direction for him (is it okay for him to be safe on shadow slide? is it okay for him to get a safety net with shadow orbs after a reversal or during pressure?) and then let the character be who he is.

Aria: I think the MP auto-double should be slowed down to match the speed of the others; I think it’s a pretty clear oversight and not intentional. (If any dev reads this, most M auto-doubles finish in about 35-36 frames, but Aria’s MP double is somewhere in the 26-29 range, much closer to a light AD). I think the linkers are fine.

Mira: I think this character might be too strong this patch. I’m really puzzled by people who think she’s weak… I don’t see the argument at all. You can play her with stifling neutral without the damage/huge risks if you want, and then she’s just an average damage character with super powerful neutral and one of the best shadows in the game. And you can turn on the crazy risk/high damage stuff whenever you want. Her command grab is silly good… in fact, I’m not sure even the devs realize just how good it is (easily the lowest recovery of any command grab in the game, and it can’t be punished by jumps in almost all situations where it is most likely to be used). I think light bats during pressure + react with M air grab for jumps, or else instant air dash + button + more light bats is incredibly stifling against certain big body characters as well.

I mean, sometimes you will spend a lot of blood health, get broken and then get opened up and die. That’s gonna happen sometimes, but I think Mira’s kit is plenty good enough to minimize the amount of times this happens to you, and doing 55% off an early lockout for no bar is something no other character can touch. People should gamble/make reads with counter breakers a bit more with her! You can take more damage from being wrong on a counter breaker because the reward for being right is literally an entire round if you do the optimal combos.

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For Omen: Rather than nerfing his meter gain; I would like to see him have more reason to double up his shadow moves (double shadow-orta shield, shadow-orta shield into shadow-rashukuken, ect…) as it stands those are mostly a waste of meter. I would like to see his shadow-rashukuken only fire 2 shots, and the shadow-orta into shadow-rashukuken be buffed to always fire 3 shots even if the shadow-orta shield has already lost 1 or 2 orbs.
Just spit-balling Ideas here, it’s always annoyed me that shadow-rashukuken looked so much more effective than shadow-orta, and that the orta-rashukuken combo is a total waste of meter, while orta-orta looks far more useful.

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Agree with basically all of the changes proposed, with these few exceptions:

Jago: I really believe what Jago has going too much for him is meter gain from his endokukens. Either nerf it overall by say 15% or something along those lines, or nerf it more significantly for his double endokukens alone (like 25-30%, I’d say). I really feel that what actually allows Jago to take so much value off his instinct is actually that he always has so much meter.

Omen: I think he’d be fine if he was forced to use a battery ender if he wanted to gain significant meter, one that’d do significantly less damage, like the rest of the cast. As it stands, having every ender serve as a battery feels like it just allows him to always have meter. I’d also be up for a decrease in meter gain overall for his neutral.

@Infilament as for Mira, even if I don’t think she’s weak at all, I do see the point people make with her not being too tournament viable.

You’re absolutely right when you say her command grab has amazing frame data, for sure. Thing is, it’s a command grab and like every other command grab it does represent a risk, even if less risky than others, with less recovery. And while others have a direct health advantage with the damage dealt, some coupled with heavy KD properties, Mira’s will only really give you a health swing if you’ve already added silver damage, and it won’t ever help you win, it’ll just help you not lose. And if you already have the silver life to regain, then you’re already behind on life and needing the regain, which turns the risk into an even bigger risk, if it doesn’t pay off.

As for the crazy good neutral, I only feel that that is so, if you use health, because if you play conservatively she doesn’t really have an outstanding neutral at all, IMO. In order to open up her opponent she needs to use health, as all her other options will fall short against good defense. Furthermore, if you do use health to have really amazing pressure and neutral, in a game like KI where opening your opponent doesn’t guarantee that much damage and you are constantly forced to play the combo game, it isn’t rare that she will end up running great risks to open her opp up, and then not reaping any reward at all.

And the fact that the only wake up option she has consumes so much life and is only really a way to escape, and never an actual threat to the opponent, she can’t really go too wild with blood usage without very easily risking the round to a knockdown.

Anyway, I feel that as it stands, with the most recent patch, Mira became a bit better balanced by losing a bit of the ridiculously high instinct combo damage and getting a bit more life regain with her bite linkers. I don’t feel she’s too strong or too weak. I still feel that, in order to be a really reliable character for competitive play, she’d need to have an even more reliable way to regain life without having to land a command grab or using shadow meter in shadow bite as an ender (bite linkers getting another 50% life gain added to them should do the trick for good, IMO). In return, I feel that she could easily have her M and H reaping be punishable (-6 each, for example) to make up for the extra life gain, and she’d be perfectly balanced.

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The problem I see with Mira is that her design doesn’t mesh well with the combo breaker system. Spend your health to get in, get broken, you’re now losing. If you try to circumvent this by going for short combos then you’re neglecting one of her biggest strengths, or you won’t build enough health back compared to what you spent. You’re pretty much forced to play the long combo game with her which no one likes to do in this game.
Also losing the actual life lead with Mira is especially hard on her since she has to spend even more health to get it back which just makes the hill she has to climb keep growing.

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That’s a glass cannon for you.

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I actually agree with this. But as it stands, omens other enders don’t really do much.

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I was gonna say my piece, but @Infilament basically said my exact thoughts.

And on the topic of Mira…she’s always going to be a gamble character. I agree that I don’t think soloing her in tournaments is likely to yield solid, consistent results. But at the same time, I think she has everything she needs to make that reward huge. I mean, I get a counter breaker, and your life is gone! That’s crazy! I started trying to get good with her today and her comeback factor is just ridiculous.

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Jago: I agree. I would rather they revert the damage nerfs and reduce either his healing or the damage on shadow fireballs. The unbreakable healing always seemed like more of an issue to me than the shadow DP juggle cashout.

Thunder: I kind of agree, but they toned down the juggle damage enough that I’m not really bothered by it as much.

Shago: He is probably worse than he could be. I don’t think he should be buffed.

Mira: To respond to this:

Mira does high damage from combos with few chances if you spend bar. Her one-chance one-bar punish is the highest of the “normal” combo punishes in the game, and she gets notably more damage from opening people up with basic mixup tools than other characters do. There is great incentive to try to break her early and if people aren’t doing that you can just take the damage from short combos. If they DO try to break then just roll with it, lock them out, and kill them. And of course, if you’re confident in the read, a counter breaker is near guaranteed to end the round.

And this:

Airdash and light bats are extremely potent neutral tools and cost negligible health and no health, respectively. Stand MP and stand HK are among the best normals in the game. If she has bar (which she will, frequently,) light trephine into shadow bats is among the best uses of bar in the entire game, giving her a super advantaged approach option with good range. The idea that her neutral isn’t strong if she’s not killing herself is waaaay off.

I wouldn’t say that mira isn’t tournament viable, nor would I say that she doesn’t mesh with the game system. I’d say that she doesn’t mesh well with the playstyle of many players, which is to be extremely scared, avoid risk as much as possible, and stick to highly predictable options because of perceived associated risk with other options.

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He’s not wrong.

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I’m talking about mid combo recaptures. Clutch into antlion would still be considered opener assuming the command grab was the first thing that hit; not to mention he can still flip-out and go for resets. For example getting hit by a raw scarabs which acts as an opener and then immediately getting hit by antlion…that should be breakable after my proposed change.

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I disagree, actually… I think you’re looking at it backwards.

First of all, I do think the health gain helps you win and not just not lose, because you will be able to go nuts immediately after landing it. It’s both an undoing of past “mistakes” (ie, spending blood health and not opening your opponent up), and preparing yourself for your next offensive sequence.

But also, the fact that command grab actually means something when Mira has a lot of silver life actually really works in her favor. People will be holding up or mashing buttons/backdash to try and escape this ridiculously powerful grab, and more “basic” standard offense from Mira is more likely to work. When Mira has no silver life to gain, then you aren’t scared about taking a command grab, so you are more likely to try to block it out.

Well, even just moving forward in a fighting game has risk. All actions have risk, it’s just a matter of how much.

So yes, definitely Mira’s command grab is still risky and won’t always work. But the risk/reward for it is insanely skewed when used in tick situations. You can force people to go nuts with silly options trying to stop it (because jumping doesn’t work), and then Mira’s normal offense just overpowers that.

I personally think this makes her a much less interesting character. I think the bite linkers do pretty crazy rebuild right now (any more and she’d be so insane), and having to expose herself to a shadow counter chokepoint (or else space it well in footsies) to get access to the unreactable mostly safe high low is a cool mechanic (which differentiates it a bit from the Wulf run high low in S2).

Well that only makes sense, considering spend your health to get in, lockout, win the round is the other side of the coin, right? I’m not sure I agree that she doesn’t mesh well with the breaker system. Counter breaking once wins her the round, and she can force choke points on you with heavy reaping (don’t break and you also immediately die). Maybe this is not the preferred style of some players, because it is a little swingy, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t play well with the system.

If SF4 Seth could be made to be tournament viable by numerous players with many different playstyles (an extremely swingy character that can also be played surprisingly stable), I have no doubts about Mira. I think her offense is much safer than Seth, she kinda has less life than a standard character but unlike Seth you can mitigate this with a strong offensive tool, and her non-risky footsies, mixups, and uses for meter are actually very strong.

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Well, after command grab is a “mid combo recapture” too (command grab is an opener, like all specials). So if you change antlion to be breakable mid combo, then it will also be breakable after command grab. It’s no different than, say… TJ doing raw shoot toss and then you guess breaking the next manual, except in Kan’s case, there’s not much he can do to bait a lockout or cash out without using antlion.

Since they changed Kan from S2 where he could do tons of unbreakable damage with shadow scarab and finish with antlion into ultra and stuff, I don’t really see the problem with this move anymore. It is a situation-dependent way to extend a combo (in an “all or nothing” way, unlike all the other characters with recaptures), and he can’t cash out unless he gives you a break chance.

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THOSE CHIBIS ARE SO CUTE!!!
That is all…

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Well, I certainly didn’t say her neutral wasn’t strong without killing herself xD I said I didn’t think it was outstanding, which I don’t believe it is. There are lots of characters in the game with stronger neutral than Mira’s, if she’s really playing conservative.

She has no high/low mixups, she has no left right mixups, she has no command grab that actually becomes a threat to the opponent, she has no + on block specials and even no safe advancing special. Actually, she has good neutral thanks to very good air mobility, a very good slow projectile which does close to no damage or chip and very good s.MP and s.HK and a a very good command grab to land a soft KD and go for limited oki setups.

That’s all, anything else will imply moderate to high health consumption. So I’d say that if she isn’t killing herself, she doesn’t have an outstanding neutral. Definitely strong, but far from outstanding for a KI character.

As for the risk factor in tournament play, I personally play a very aggressive Mira and tend to risk maybe a bit too much in terms of silver health. While I’m well aware of the advantages in this and of her strengths in a risky playstyle, I am also well aware of the reverse side of the coin. Spending 25% of your health to open your opponent up to get counter broken hurts and is an everyday meal. What I mean with this is that the kind of high risk high reward that is associated with glass cannon characters should be looked at somewhat differently when the reward in itself isn’t guaranteed even if you make the right calls, but the risk always is.

@Infilament Yeah, but that whole mind game also works in reverse. If your opponent isn’t scared of the command grab and simply reads that you’re not going for it, you’re quickly stuck between a wall and a spike, and you start going too far. When that happens, you really do need the life regain, because Mira can only maintain her offense for so long without spending more life, and if you lose momentum and go on the defensive, you’re bound to either get opened up because you have no threatening reversal game or spend even more life trying to get away, and that’s how a round is lost simply against good choices from an opponent who only needs to open you up once.

You say jumping doesn’t work to stop the command grabs, but it does. The fact it doesn’t punish doesn’t mean it doesn’t stop it, IMO. You block a jump in and suddenly you’re on the defensive.

You basically have a char who needs to use up a lot of health to open her opp up with very little damage guaranteed, who then needs to risk a command grab to try and get back any bulk of that life and if it goes wrong and she manages not to get punished, then she needs to use up more life if she wants any sort of defensive option other than the universal block/backdash/shadow counter.

Not saying it can’t work or that it doesn’t, I love the character and love using her and do use her competitively as my main char, just saying that I think the risk/reward is definitely not skewed in her favor at all, IMO. Hence why I believe she’d be much better off without an imbued safe high/low but I with a better life regain option with better bite linkers.

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First things first: the KI chibis are amazing. This must be stated and restated as much as possible.

Now, onto the characters!

Jago:
I’m pretty surprised that of all the things you’d change, it’d be Jago’s +2 frames. For myself, I think the +2 mechanic is actually an interesting one and makes his play more fun/threatening on both sides, so I’d leave that alone. If you were dead set on trying to “normalize” him some more, I think that his shadow fireballs could probably have their damage tweaked, as it’d be kinda nice for him to have to make a meaningful choice in instinct between life regen and damage, instead of just getting both by default off any confirm. Overall though I feel like Jago’s very balanced (to be sure, balanced to be a great freaking character), and there isn’t much I’d do to touch him. The shadow fireball damage (or maybe tweaking the meter build on endokuken a touch more) are the only things I’d countenance.

Oh, and DP->shadow fireball should be removed. Eff safe invincible reversals :smile:

Thunder:
I think Thunder’s in a good place right now. My only remaining gripe with him is more about how his Sammamish follow-ups have so much freaking priority. It’s pretty frustrating to see your down+HP trade with a stomp. They were initially made specials to let Spinal not get dunked whenever he power devoured a DP, but with the addition of Cinder we’ve seen lower priority specials be a thing, so I’d like to see Thunder’s follow-ups get the same treatment. They don’t need to be as low on the scale as trailblazer or anything, but I think it’d be nice not to have to have a DP of your own to punish an errant Sammamish. I’m good with the post-DP mix-up, I just want everyone to be able to maybe decide that they’d rather not deal with it and be able to simply AA him, instead of almost being forced to wait and try and punish him grounded. I think it makes for an interesting choice for the defender, to either do a guaranteed AA punish, or to wait for the mixup to get that juicy grounded punish.

Ankle slicer is fine. It’s a really good move, but it’s always been a really good move.

Orchid:
I think she’s great as-is. From what I’ve seen, the purpose of her aerial target combos is largely to lock people out for trying to tech her air throw, and she tends to get solid follow-ups and juggles after hitting someone with them. Someone saying “there’s no point in getting extra damage when I can get my next guaranteed setup” is more a reflection on the player than the character’s tools IMO. I’m personally a fan of the breakable air throw, just because I think it makes her juggle game more interesting (no default best option), and because I’m generally against people getting free extra damage before their next vortex setup. You wanna vortex, then vortex - you shouldn’t get to stack on free unbreakable damage after your every 1-chance.

Shago:
I think Shago is right where he should be. I think he’s got some hidden potential in terms of just how solidly he can be played if someone is inclined to be solid. I think he’s very similar to Fulgore in that he’s super capable of controlling the neutral but can also be crazy, and I think that like Fulgore we’ll find that he’s strongest when he has a good mix of the two and knows when to pull out each option. I’d rather see people explore how they can optimize that dichotomy - if you just give him damage then everyone will simply shift into the mindset of “well, I would’ve won if I’d just mixed him up this way instead of that way.”

Kan-Ra:
I think he’s about perfect where he is right now. Infil and I have debated on more than one occasion on whether or not antlion should be breakable, but given Kan’s S3 kit I’m actually pretty ok with it remaining unbreakable. Kan doesn’t get crazy upfront unbreakable damage anymore, so the threat of a something->antlion->manual->ender isn’t really that potent anymore. Kan can do it if he wants, but he isn’t going to kill you from that. Stripped of all that former upfront damage, it’s really not much different than what TJ or Hisako (full wrath) or Thunder (normal throw) get from their grab options, and I think that’s pretty ok. Kan is good as-is, unbreakable recap and all.

Omen:
I feel like I’m always amused by how people describe S3 Omen. Of the things that make him nutty, his shadow fireballs not going away on hit (the normal ones never did) is actually not super high on the list IMO. Improved air mobility is really the secret sauce to S3 Omen - if you removed his shadow fireball pressure strings then you’d just get shadow form versions of that pressure instead. His meter gain per ender is probably always up for debate, but reduced meter capacity is a non-starter I think.

Aria:
Her grenade linkers are pretty fair, even if I’m personally kinda crappy at breaking them. Looking at your own character is a pretty solid way to break all strengths of it, since even the light one goes on for pretty long. It’d be nice to see the medium punch AD thing be normalized to be more in line with the rest of the cast though.

Mira: (pseudo-rant incoming):
I think Mira is still the most consistently underrated character in the game - since her release I have had her in my personal Top 5, and nothing done to her in 3.4 changes my opinion on that. I think she by design will always have to walk the razor’s edge to win, but I think that any player who truly learns to walk that line will be nigh-unbeatable.

I honestly do not see how this can be said of a character who literally can kill you at any moment if you make a mistake. That is basically the definition of someone’s “risk/reward” factor being pretty darn high.

I think this is simply one of those things that you have to accept with a character of Mira’s (designed) volatility - sometimes you will spend too much blood health pressing an advantage or pressuring, and you will die for it. But like Infil, I tend to think this can be mitigated, and in particular I think that she above all KI characters is tailor-made to take advantage of the breaker game. Mira should be tossing out easily-breakable crap mid-combo - she has the tools to make every step of it an absolute nail-biter for the opponent, and that is not nothing. Mira can present you with damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t dombo scenarios, and to truly be successful with her I think she has to be willing to get herself killed sometimes in the pursuit of those options.

In terms of her neutral, both light bats and air-dash do negligible or no silver health, and both are potent tools. She has some great footsie buttons, some of the better tick options in the game (strengthened by the fear of letting her hit you with embrace when she’s got a lot of silver life). Her shadow bat mixups (seriously, light trephine->shadow bats is silly good) are very strong, etc. And to top it off, she can end a bar virtually at-will. Yes, you have to play the breaker game to do it, but Mira has the tools to heavily skew what her opponent wants to do within that game, and that’s incredibly strong.

Again, I think that Mira absolutely has to walk a razor’s edge in terms of what she goes for and when or else she’s gonna get dunked, but again, the tools for greatness are all there. All she needs is someone ballsy enough to play her with the kind of bulldog-mentality that favors her.

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The chibis are awesome. And this is a great thread.

I don’t consider myself one of the great strategic minds on here, but these are my two cents:

Jago
Why don’t they give him a recapture? Then he would have every tool in the game, including ample frame traps, reset potential, a throw you can combo from… I don’t see how Jago isn’t in everyone’s top 3. He isn’t broken, per se, but if you slowed the game down to 3/4 or half speed I don’t think anyone could ever beat Jago because he has an answer for everything and it’s usually a good answer and even when he messes up he’s only kind of half punishable in most things because of his DP, block string, throw mixups. Having said that, I’m not sure how you can really pull his tools away from him and not really mess him up. Any small change to damage, meter gain or instinct is probably fine. But Jago is going to be strong unless they just come in and wholesale remove something. But it’s fine with me that Jago is strong.

Thunder
I think 3.4 is a big improvement for him. Not sure I get the sudden hate for Ankle Slicer. Especially since he has a pretty reactible overhead. His sammamish follow up options are a bit nuts and I would support the idea of having a tighter window for them rather than whatever random time Thunder feels like after his DP.

Mira
I’m garbage with Mira but put me in the camp that feels strongly we will eventually see a Mira expert emerge who does for Mira what Sleep did for Kan Ra in season 2. This is a character that is playing a whole different game and some savant is going to just “get” the health balance/management intuitively and out of nowhere just crush everybody.

Aria
I don’t think Aria needs balancing, really, but I agree that she shouldn’t be so hard to break. I don’t think this is an intentional balanceissueamd she doesn’t need it.

Hisako
Again, not an OP character and I’m mostly fine with her special brand of dirty, although countering the first hit of a shadow counter seems like it’s hard to justify even if it isn’t something I see super often. But after a patch where we adjusted Glacius’s puddle punches on principle rather than performance it seems like that might be fair game. Regardless, i would like to see Hisako’s ADs be more obvious. Especially since she gets to vary the speed I just find her too hard to break. Add in resets and good shadow ended damage and I’m not seeing that she need AD obscurity too.

Kim Will - I’d still just like to see a very small improvement to her active frames on Dragin counter . I just don’t think it has to be this right.

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I guess I don’t see the point here. Either they aren’t scared of the command grab because you have no silver life (at which point, Mira is at her strongest offensive potential using standard life-consuming tools), or you have some amount of silver life on you, at which point they should be very nervous about getting hit by it. I don’t think there’s ever a point, really, where Mira is close to you and you shouldn’t be worried about something.

If the point is that there are clear times when Mira “needs to” go for command grab, thus making it easier to avoid because it’s kind of telegraphed or else she kills herself by pressing too much, then I think that’s just standard FGC conditioning stuff.

Well, okay, sometimes you spend the life (the risk) and then get broken for little to no reward. I suppose this is what you mean by “making the right calls”, but because KI characters have such strong offensive tools, it’s not particularly difficult to land a hit, as I’m sure we all know. I don’t think it’s fair to say getting a hit but losing the combo game is “making the right calls”. You got halfway there (and got half-ish of your reward) but then got broken.

Granted, you did take on a fair bit of the risk to get your half reward but… the full reward, had you not been broken, is so incredibly high that I think it totally overcomes these other cases if you play the combo game well enough on average, no? What other glass cannon character kills you in one combo? Traditional glass cannons like Phoenix or Seth have to live with dying to one combo at all times… for Mira, you basically have full health until you spend blood health. That is, if someone touches you at the start of round 1, you don’t immediately melt like those other characters do, so she’s only glass cannon after she has taken the risks that didn’t work out, which I think is pretty cool for her. Imagine if Seth had 1000 health until he started using command grabs, for instance.

Well, okay. By “stop” I mean get decent reward. A blocked jump-in is nice (and perhaps extra nice against Mira, with weaker defensive options), but it’s 0 damage. Against some jumps, Mira can actually AA with medium grab after a neutral jump of a tick grab! At the very least, she can backdash (for 0 life) and avoid blocking the jump-in. In fact, I bet you can just OS backdash after every tick grab attempt and be preeeetty safe, unless the opponent wants to do empty jump and shadow wind kick or something.

Basically, if the worst that happens to Mira for attempting a 30% health swing is being put in block stun, I think that’s incredibly good.

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Maybe in it’s original version it didn’t, but I think it absolutely has to have its extra-tight timing now. Kim’s parry is still an omni-parry, and now that omni-parry leads into a combo without too much extra trouble.

It’s harder to hit than Hisako’s counter for sure, but (probably from all my time with Hisako) I’ve found that it’s pretty darn reliable in general. I don’t actually miss with it that often, and because of how much of a live threat it is as a reversal (one that now can lead into combo) I think that it really does have to have some strict limitations in timing on it.

On the Hisako piece, I think her breakability is more balanced than most people think. Her AD’s can be difficult to recognize, but her linkers aren’t bad at all. Her medium and heavy linkers can actually all be broken on reaction - I think that’s part of the reason she was given so many other combo options. Try catching her on her linkers next time you fight her. :thumbsup:

On the shadow counter piece, I think shadow counterable Hisako is a much worse character, and it actually removes a good chunk of why you keep wrath around in the first place. I think a change to that mechanic would affect her game in ways you probably wouldn’t think - you’d basically encourage her to just be in your face at all times and always pushing buttons, as opposed to the more thoughtful pacing and spacing game that she plays (or should be playing anyway) at present.

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Ok, for the chibis, thank @LFrog for them!

Second:

I like this patch. :slight_smile: