what is? The meta isnt realy a player thing alone
spacing, footsies all that stuff.
ASsfor jago’s fireball feint, I’m no jago main, but I know the value in being able to dash cancel something and fake someone out. It requires practice and reads.
I’ve already got ARIA stuff for her dash cancels.
Even great players get dunked sometimes. It happens. Especially if they’re learning a MU.
As to KI getting crazier in S3, I guess I kind of say “eh?” Kim Wu is one of the most honest characters in the game, and even with dragons she’s very straightforward. Tusk is also incredibly “fundamental” in my opinion - it just so happens that he’s playing his footsies game at extended ranges, so now your job is to crack that wall he makes around himself with his sword. Arbiter is kind of nutty, ditto Rash, though the latter is actually a lot more spacing dependent (and unsafe on everything) than people think. Mira has crazy options, but noticeable penalties (and also isn’t safe on much), and Raam is basically SF4 Gief, which is pretty “fundamental” as the term is commonly understood. Gargos has a ton of options in exchange for terribad defense, and Eyedol is in line to get tagged by the nerf bat.
I guess I just don’t see the S3 cast being that much more out there than the other seasons. S1 had Wulf (if you think his teleporting backdash and dash throughs are “honest” and “fundamental” then you’re crazy), Sadira, Spinal, and Fulgore. S2 had Kan-Ra, Riptor (shenanigans with a side of YOLO), Maya (haha, you blocked me and now you’re dead), TJ (roll to freedom and #powerline), Cinder, and Aria. I actually think S3 is pretty tame compared to some of the stuff IG tried in S2, and while S1 was generally more grounded, it was dirty in the extreme in terms of the neutral game.
And for the record, Jago still has great footsies as does Wulf. You have to be a touch smarter about how you apply those skills in certain MU’s, but they’re definitely still potent.
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Sleep won with Gargos lol
And I like watching Jago, Wulf and other more classic characters for the same reasons you’ve described. It’s also a big reason why this community is slow to grow. But, you’re talking to a wall here. Save your breath.
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Well he bodied bass for pretty much free, mainly because bass was like “what do guys???” I could see it in the gameplay. He didn’t know what to do. Sleep even mentioned that bass didn’t know the MU completely. As the matches showed. It was quite the landslide victory.
Ofc thouse chars had there broken stuff that was abit to yolo and hard to counter, but most of that got nerfed pretty good, and sorry for not mentioning that im not talking about s1-2 chars in their prime. Im talking about thouse chars as a reference to a time where spacing, footsies and neutral mattered more.
I still see that plenty in S3…
True, i forgot about that, and now that you mentioned it, it wasnt very fun to watch which might be the reasson i forgot about it… With characters like gargos its hard to see how players think, and how they adapt to certain situations. All you can do is pray that the player you root for somehow manage to block the yolo onslaught of crazy 50/50 mixups the other player is throwing at him and somehow finds a window to counter..
Well i see to little of it 
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Well that’s kinda luck of the draw. Least it’s better then full on anime games where there’s very little if any neutral game. Least in KI it happens alot of the time.
I guess this is where the disconnect is for me. Most of that stuff didn’t get nerfed, not really. Sadira was as nutty in S2 as she was in S1, Spinal was nuttier, as was Fulgore since they gave him “free” pips. Wulf lost the teleport backdash and dash-through eclipse got nerfed, but he gained feral cancels, which were basically the definition of safe and crazy 50/50’s.
If you’re just saying you prefer a more grounded, mid-range poke game, then yeah, that’s a preference thing. But you didn’t have to play that way in S1 with fully half the cast - Jago invalidates footsies with wind kick, Sadira invalidates footsies period, Spinal with a skull never played honestly, etc. I guess now that there are more characters you’re maybe less likely to run into someone who wants to play that solid, grounded game, but overall I’d lay that a lot more at the feet of S2 than S3. Half of S3 plays fairly straightforward and grounded, though perhaps outside of the range you personally like?
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Addressing the content of your post in order…
Beating randoms online is not the same as playing real players. Set me down in SF4 in front of a bunch of people at the average skill level of randoms online in KI and I’ll make dee jay look like the best character in the game.
Arbiter and tusk’s overheads are DEFINITELY not better than jago’s. Both arbiter and tusk’s overheads are very slow and reactable. Eyedol’s overhead is ridiculous, but even his is slower than jago’s. All have a range advantage over jago, but in terms of actually opening people up jago’s is pretty clearly better than arbiter/tusk’s.
Arbiter and gargos are both pretty clearly lacking in some areas. Arbiter has almost no high/low game to speak of, and his grounded mobility is glacius-esque, being limited to moving while attacking or spending resources to make jumping safe. He makes up for it in other areas though. Gargos, on the other hand, is extremely reliant on doing things that will eventually put him in the corner unless he has minions out, and has awful defensive options. His damage is also fairly low, which means that it’s very easy to reverse any advantage he has once you’ve caught him.
Glacius is still a super strong character, his damage is crazy and many characters are going to have a really hard time getting close to him. Sabrewulf is still an obviously strong character, his grounded mobility is great, he has amazing space control with his normals, and his ability to low profile with hamstring and his normals is very strong.
Funny that you complain about gargos “spamming overheads” when his reward for landing his overhead is the lowest in the game and it’s unsafe on block.
It seems to me you should spend more time evaluating the game’s characters before you pass judgment on them.
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Lol what? If you’re getting combo’d you are not in neutral
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Interesting post.
Defense: Gargos’s defense is trash and Arbiter cant defend without meter or grenades. I think Jago easily outshines them in this sense with Tiger fury.
Safe Offense: Arbiters overhead is plus, but has a gap in which you can attack. Gargos does not have any plus offense. Laser sword and light wind kick are very potent tools for locking down your opponent.
Arbiter and Gargos are NOT flawless characters, nobody is. Jago seems to be lacking in any major weaknesses, but we all acknowledge that he is not perfect.
Season 1 was much more straight-forward and “clean” than the 2nd half of season 2 and especially season 3. Footsies are dead and buried, and any hope of the game being easy to follow for casual/non-KI players has long been given-up on.
Keits’s approach to game design is very dissapointing.
- kitchen-sink whatever crazy idea he takes from Marvel or GG or BB
- stubbornly ignore every valid complaint for months as the game catches on fire due to the new character (all the while he, Goddard and Tempus act very passive-aggressive towards the fans making actually valid complaints)
- backtrack against their own previous comments as they realize fans were actually right (see Fulgore, Kan-ra, TJ, Wulf, Maya patches the last two seasons I used to love curse-stealing Spinal but rainbow bouncy skulls curse-stopping Spinal just isn’t fun to play)
I spent 3 days teaching KI to players who had never touched a XBox One at a local anime convention back in July, most of them having played SF and MK at bare minimum, and it seriously just didn’t work. People liked mashing to the game, but beside MKX, SF5, BB, GGXrd it was just a lost case. The game just isn’t transparent at all, it was the ugliest game on all 4 consoles there (I couldn’t even bring myself to defend rat Wulf), and the only game that actually had empty seats from time to time (all games were on free play).
The whole 3 days, it was the same 5 or 6 people playing.
If they had stuck to the more straight-forward approach of S1, where the harshest it got was Fulgore and Spinal, and footsies still mattered, with no air breakers, no counter breakers, short juggles, no recaptures, no flip-outs, no staggers, maybe KI wouldn’t be dead-last in tournaments numbers and stream viewers.
Right now, I see Marvel-level characters everywhere filling the screen with BS and I just jump back to Home and go watch Netflix or Twitch. I don’t even own a PS4 but I’m rather watch a Karin vs Ryu match in SF5 than play KI S3 (outside of Eyedol).
Make sure you lock it on the way out. It has a habit of not locking sometimes and a draft can come in. Kinda annoying.
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Woa… Shots fired! Shots fired! Duck and cover! Run for the hills! 
Personally, I think what each character has brought to the table has only ADDED to the game, not removed things from it. Much of the stuff from each season is still in tact. Sure, the game isn’t perfect by any means (COUGH Eyedol’s j.HP COUGH), but I’d venture out on a limb to say that it’s probably better than most other FGs in this regard. The combo system does wonders for allowing 2-way interaction and endless mind-games throughout the entire fight.
As far as teaching others, that’s always going to be hard, no matter the subject or medium - trust me on that. 
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Dude, if you really don’t like season 3 all that much, just leave already.
Your criticisms are purely out of biases and misunderstanding, you simply do not have the willingness or fairness to allow the game to evolve on its own terms.
And Keits ‘approach’ to Killer Instinct may not be perfect, but he’s the one making the game that works, in general, pretty competently, not you.
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