Airthrow does a litteral 1% damage and doesnt lead to anything. Why would anyone in their right mind break it? Even if the Orchid player did complete a juggle, her shadow cashout is horrid adding only 8% in most scenarios. You would be a fool to ever counter break.
If nobody in their right mind should break it, why do you suggest to make it unbreakable? If nobody is going to break it, then it doesn’t matter if its breakable or not, don’t you think?
1 Like
I wasn’t gonna dip back into this, but earlier you said:
And now you’re saying:
Having a consistent message makes discussion easier.
2 Likes
If you never counter break it, the opponent will just break it. Why wouldn’t they break it? They get to escape the vortex for free with no risk because counter breaking it makes you a fool. You can counter break there and get even more damage than a hard knockdown ender. Wouldn’t counter breaking it make sense.
3 Likes
Huh 
I trust you’re astute enough to realize the issue in you making this statement.
3 Likes
There’s your answer. They would break because no one counter breaks it.
3 Likes
I’m not sure I follow.
Neither party knows what the other will do. Having the mindset of well no one counters this is irrelevant. Meaning neither is willing to ever gamble on that specific situaion.
Whats inconsistent?
Airthrow does no damage.
Airthrow is breakable.
These are facts.
And some of you may recall they heavily nerfed airthrow damage in S2 as well.
Well, you say one thing, then say another thing that’s completely contradictory…
Sure I would of contradicted myself If I said airthrow is worth using but i never have in this thread. Just fot the context of this discussion did I mention why would anyone break it.
Which isn’t that the same situation as the air throw being unbreakable in the first place? It won’t get broken.
If air throw is so useless that no one will ever break it, then making it unbreakable is irrelevant. There is no meaningful difference in making it actually unbreakable if neither player is “ever” willing to gamble on it. Using sweeping language like that counters the thesis of your whole thread. 
In general, you are using very definitive, all-encompassing language when you really shouldn’t be, and it is muddling your argument. People break things they have no business breaking all the time, and that has been a thing since S1. I’ve seen you both land and whiff counter breakers on Orchid’s air throw at high level; I’ve seen it any number of times at low and intermediate play as well. So obviously there is a mind game to be played there. You may not like the mind game, but it does you no credit to act as if it doesn’t exist.
You don’t like the specific reward for landing an air throw and letting it rock. You feel like if you’re going to be “forced” to play the counter break game you’d like it to be weighted in your direction (where it does or leads to “enough” damage to become a more threatening choke point). That’s fine, but you should just say that. You use phrases like “no one”, “no damage”, and “ever”, when even a brief search through some tournament archives would prove the lie in those generalities. Stop weakening your own argument through careless phrasing.
4 Likes
Also, Orchid’s shadow cashout adding “only” 8% is puzzling. 8% is a pretty decent chunk of damage? In fact, feel free to show me examples of cases where a shadow cashout gets you more than 8% additional damage over the base damage ender. There are probably considerably fewer examples of this than you think (in fact, the number is probably close to zero).
I also disagree pretty fundamentally with the “nobody knows what’s going to happen, therefore nobody will break” thing. Why would I take any additional damage on purpose if I can break something on reaction that my opponent will never counter break? Even if the number is as low as 1%, I’ll just break it and save 1% and the setup after (which probably on average gets me hit for 4-5% more)! Not everyone is averse to risk.
I mean, your very first suggestion in the OP is for Orchid’s air throw to be unbreakable, but do 0 damage, and lead to the same juggles as it currently does. If you say nobody breaks it currently, then you are actually suggesting a nerf for your character. I dunno how we are supposed to respond to this confusing message.
1 Like
No disrespect to anyone here and thanks to all for the interesting discussion, but I feel this thread has kind of taken its course so this will be my final peace on the matter; I’m sure Keits and the other developers have read it at this point.
First I want to apologize to not only you but others in this thread because I do agree to an extent that my arguments have been muddled and hard to understand. I attribute this to that in my OP I didn’t go into enough depth because there were several issues surrounding the one I wanted to focus on and was hard to explain one without explaining the rest. When I use words or phrases like “no one” or “useless” I’m referring to top players, competitive players or mostly myself.
My overall goal was to try and explain that a lot of Orchid’s tools are being underutilized which falls on multiple things.
Most importantly I understand that not everyone is like me and always tries to avoid risk. For me risk falls under two categories which are “safe risk” and “unnecessary risk.” Safe risk would be when I have gigantic life lead and decide it’s okay to play silly and counter break at random times. Unnecessary risk as an example is when both players are in danger and I counter break a shadow linker. (speaking for myself here) my thought process is if they break it so what, we are back in neutral and he has to earn that last hit as do I. Being confident that I can outplay my opponent in the neutral is what dictates my risk taking.
Following my logic above, this is the same reason I would never break Shadow Jago Juggles when he doesn’t have meter to cashout. Same with Tusk skewer, I would rather eat 5% (or whatever it is) all day long instead of getting counter broken and eating 60%. Whether I’m playing a novice or a top competitive player it doesn’t matter because I don’t know what they are going to do therefore I take the safest option. The last time I decided to counter break an Orchid air throw in tournament was at SCR against Nicky. He was smarter than I was and realized that I wasn’t going to get anything off this and didn’t break; and that is after he already proceeded to break every other juggle in the set beforehand.
There are even rare occurrences where players are sitting on a pixel of health and decided to counter break something like a Tusk skewer. Orchid cannot do this because the damage off airthrow doesn’t come until after the counter widow of the air throw active frames are already gone.
(Notice the shadow uppercat do minimal damage and then airthrow not kill before the counter)
I could of literally done flick flack ender here and he would of the died to the guaranteed grenade chip since Kneebuster nor shadow uppercat was enough. I could of also just not counter broke like my arugment suggest however I truly thought he would of died before I did it, but I learned real quick that the damage doesn’t come until the bounce.
I tested this just the other day, Orchid’s shadow cashout adds anywhere between an extra 1-3% damage on a grounded combo even you would agree that is a complete waste am I right? With that being said, I personally much rather spend my meter on Shadow Flick Flack as it does a considerable amount of real damage and big amount of potential damage as well. This is where my “safe risk” category comes into play because sure it’s breakable just like an air juggle but my reward is much greater. I was showing off Orchid 73%+ combos on my stream using Shadow Flick Flack in combo. Who wouldn’t value 73% over a 23% juggle.
I’m sure we will never come to a consensus on this and that’s fine because everyone is different. 
Your argument is that if I have the mentality that hes never going to counter break this then why keep giving him free damage and just break…well you are technically correct but that also doesn’t mean my logic is flawed or I’m wrong; it just means I have a different play style and different way of thinking. Every single fighting game player is different and play different every time they sit down to play. For example, everyone knows that I don’t counter break but still choose to let my combos rock. Subconsciously they know I won’t counter break but choose not to break anyways. There is a mind game here, but for me it’s that there is no mind game. 
This option just ensures that players such as myself who don’t like taking risk and avoid it all together no longer have to do this. Again though due to my failed approach in the original post, this has to be coupled with option 3 which to increase the damage on air juggles to increase the reward of my risk taking of being broken and being knocked down and losing whatever momentum I had. To further back my standing I posted twitter thoughts earlier in this thread from other top Orchid players Garnlyfeats and DaytonJ who also believe these tools could use some love.
One last quick point I wanted to make was that they heavily nerfed Orchid’s air throw damage in S2 while it was still unbreakable which made sense; it was just doing silly amounts of damage for being free. However in S3 it does 1% and is breakable which doesn’t make sense anymore…because I can juggle off of it? I just don’t think this change of making air throw breakable was thought out enough before implemented. Even during the S3 demonstration of the changes at World Cup, Keits explained that double air throw was going to be much easier to do since they increase the active frames yet double air throw doesn’t exist due to it being breakable. Why would they go through so much hassle to make air throw better? Because clearly they didn’t have making it breakable in mind at the time of the world cup therefore this decision should be re-evaluated.
In conclusion
- I don’t see a reason to use Orchid’s Airthrow in its current form
- Flick Flack Ender is doing too much at the moment
- Itch-ni-san ender could probably use some love
- Orchid juggles do no damage worth the effort/risk of doing them
(I get there are others who see these things as a way to bait counter breakers, but as I’ve explained from my personal perspective at nauseam now that I disagree with that mentality.) Despite all of that I still think Orchid is a solid character this season. I could totally continue to play her as is and be content with that but when I notice something that isn’t right I tend to bring it up regardless of not if it effects me or my character in a negative way.
Although I may have quoted Infilament and Storm here, I meant this to be a final post and a more clear summary of where I stand on this matter so that everyone can read it not just for them.
1 Like
Leave LCD alone you guys 
he like joanna dark. He can never do any Wrong with me 