New CU tomorrow morning! 3.3.1

General Discussion
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The issue with skyfall isn’t that it can be made safe with crow’s dash - it’s that it’s an incredibly fast halfscreen left/right mixup that leads into a very potent damage loop or reset. It wouldn’t matter if the move was -50 on block - it’s really hard to block sometimes even when you are looking for it, and because of the high priority on the follow-ups you can’t just say “eff it, I’ll just take a low-damage punish on the whiffed DP” like you can with something like Cinder’s fireflash or Fulgore’s DP->lasers. Having a hitbox that’s as insane as it is is just one more straw on an already pretty-overburdened camel. Personally, I can deal with the other nonsense about the move, but getting sucked into DP loops off something that didn’t even look like it hit me is very frustrating.

Similarly, light invincible DP isn’t maybe a little silly because it’s hard to punish or anything - it gets brought into the conversation moreso because of the way it’s presence affects oki on Thunder and his meter situation. Namely, that it means he usually has a bar present for shadow cashout or shadow COTE, which is easy to tagged by if you’re trying to bait the DP.

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Remove LP Sammamish inv so that thunder needs meter to actually have an inv reversal and most of this is fixed, IMO. This way he won’t have all that meter to just waste away on cashouts and shadow COtE.

He can have his follow ups on LP as well to make up for it.

Personally, I still fill he shouldn’t have Sammamish follow ups on block. I feel they make the punish harder and more iffy than it should be. But maybe that’s just me.

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So then what do you suggest? Narrowing the attack box on skyfall, making the follow up more startup, increasing the move’s active frames to make it more reactable, removing flipout on knee, removing ground bounce on skyfall, or plain removing the skyfall? I can’t deny the move has a GIANT hitbox, but I also think it has one rightfully so. If it’s too narrow it becomes useless because gauging distances to actually use it correctly would become ridiculously hard, and missing with it when it should have hit would become far too frequent, the other extreme opposite of where we are currently.

If you remove dropkick, his ability to gain distance on fast moving, distance oriented characters is hindered, and with zoners being stronger than ever, Thunder would be useless against half the cast. If you could remove the flipout on knee…actually while that would remove some of his mixup potential, I could see it removing loop options as far as that goes, but the flipout loops for damage is the big thing everyone wants eliminated right? There would have to be an offset to the knee losing flipout though, maybe just acting as a juggle?

Thunder’s a character that has the most to risk with the removal of any tool in his arsenal, and to be honest, the only conclusion I can come to is people want the weaker season 2 version of him back, where he has insane amounts of trouble getting in, no juggle potential, and overall suffers against characters with extreme zoning potential because he can’t even get in to do what he has to, rendering him unplayable. His balance is probably one of the toughest ones in the cast to achieve, and every season he’s probably been the problem character to correctly balance in a game built on the craziness KI has become. I can easily say, I don’t want him back to season 2 levels, it’s game over if you do that to him, and I have to voice out against that.

Yeah, but with a newfound emphasis on combos other than the grounded game ones, isn’t giving him better potential for a shadow cashout a reasonable decision? I don’t see the light sammamish being invincible being a problem, and giving Thunder opportunity to cashout a juggle isn’t so bad. Of course, you could be referring to the fact he also has follow up on shadow sammamish with skyfall and knee flipout.

So he should just be useless against zoner’s and never be able to gain ground? I understand making distance matchups difficult, but that would just be the end for the character. Thunder would pretty much be the only unusable character in the game. And if you honestly feel that way, maybe Maya shouldn’t have dagger follow ups on her DP either? Her’s are worse than Thunder’s, making her completely safe on block.

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Well, Maya doesn’t have dagger follow-ups on blocked DP anymore…it was degenerate and made punishing her reversal much harder than it should be.

On the other stuff, I’ve never said Thunder’s DP follow-ups should be removed. I agree the MK one gives him some legs in tough MU’s against zoners, and I think the flipout is an interesting addition to his game. My particular beef is with skyfall having such a stupid hitbox - if I pop instinct and see Thunder coming down, I shouldn’t have to guess whether or not Thunder’s magic fall will hit me even though his feet are literally nowhere near me. That is silly, and incredibly frustrating to have to deal with. No straight down divekick in the game has anywhere near the hitbox that skyfall does.

So it makes it harder for Thunder to use it? That’s perfectly fine - he shouldn’t be in the habit of throwing out DP’s in neutral anyway, banking on skyfall’s magnificently sized hitbox to make it all work out. If you want to do a near-unreactable half screen left/right mix-up, the least you can do is have to space it out properly. There’s a happy medium in there between “misses all the time” and “how the heck did that hit me?” I don’t think you need to slow it down or nerf its startup (it is supposed to be a potent mixup after all), but I don’t think it’s too much to ask to not get clipped by a move that literally doesn’t look like it touched you.

Thunder has always (since S2 anyway) been able to cash out juggles. Him being able to cash out his juggles isn’t the issue. The issue is him functionally always having the meter to cash them out, in large part because he no longer has to husband his shadow meter to defend himself on knockdown. That is why light Sammamish is dangerous - not necessarily because it’s an invincible reversal (which for record, is always really good), but because of the way it opens up Thunder’s meter usage for other things. He sits on his bars until he wants to shadow cashout or shadow COTE, and because he can defend himself on knockdown regardless there’s no downside to doing so.

An invincible meterless reversal isn’t the end of the world, but it affects a character’s game in more ways than just “now I can’t be abused on knockdown.” That’s certainly a part of it, but it isn’t necessarily the whole story. Given how potent Thunder is offensively, both in terms of damage and mix-ups, I don’t think it’s very difficult at all to make the case that he probably doesn’t need a meterless invincible reversal to make him competitive.

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Maya doesn’t have dagger follow ups on block anymore. Just like thunder shouldn’t. And again, this has nothing to do with mobility. If you’re getting your Sammamish blocked then you’re already close enough to your opponent that you don’t need to Yolo DP in there. You can just play footsies.

This wouldn’t make him unusable at all, nor would it actually affect his matchup against zoners all that much either, IMO. Thunder players would just need to think a little more before mindlessly throwing out DP after DP.

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Yeah, used that in season 2 but very rarely, considering his juggle ability wasn’t great.

Point taken…

I thought that was only on the light version. Must have misread the change notes earlier in the season.

So only follow ups on hit or whiff? Not on block? That…sounds like a fair compromise. I’m not sold on taking away light DP’s invincibility, but you’ve swayed me on this point. I got earlier the issue this creates with his meter situation, but it still doesn’t sell me about removing the invincibility on the move.

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Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. On hit you have the follow ups for extended comboability, on whiff you get them for movement options. On block you take the punish as you should, for getting your DP blocked.

As for the light sammamish losing inv, sorry, but that’s the most important part. Right now, Thunder simply always has meter to spend on damage, on shadow COTE and for cashing out juggles that he gets from skyfall. If you enjoy your skyfall nonsense and don’t want the move nerfed, if you like having all those options, then you should compromise and accept having to use meter if you want to DP on wake up, IMO.

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I gotta say, no disrespect, but the Thunder defenders have been taking the complaints WAY out context and totally skewing what some of us have been saying, so far as to be putting words in my mouth.

After getting back and reading the conversation that transpired, it seems like that’s more-or-less sorted, and we’re getting on the level with one another. That’s good, let’s keep that up.

I’m not saying remove the DP followups. I think he could actually keep the meterless reversal, that’s cool. I think TWO aspects of the DP-followup situation are absurd, and just two.
1.) Skyfall’s hitbox is absurd, and needs to be reduced so that it visually makes sense. I think @STORM179 expressed this most adequately.
2.) Remove followups from EX DP on block, to fall in line with the “no degenerate reversal followup shenanigan” philosophy.

He could even keep the followup-on-block with M/H DP, if they aren’t invincible. Also, let him use the followups on hit/whiff regardless.