Please Nerf Cold Shoulder Knock Back

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21

Cold shoulder is unsafe, but the spacing makes it hard to punish. OK

But I can’t stand to look at it as Jago’s Windkick pre 3.7

Jago windkick was nerfed not because it was too powerful by itself, it was nerfed because allowed Jago to get close from long range AND mantain his turn(somehow), being a character who shines in close range

Glacius prefers to be at long range, so getting close is a choice he makes for X reason(dealing more damage up close, preassure, avoid the other character zoning, whatever), but unlike Jago, Glacius loses the chance to use all his toolset up close. He can’t use hail at poin blank without the risk of being punished, he can’t use shatter without the risk of being reacted an punished, etc…

Also, even if Glacius is unsafe but spacing doesn’t allow to punish him properly… what’s the matter? Unless he used hail previously, his options when cold shoulder spaces him far from his opponnent are:
1-Use another attack, including another cold shoulder, to beat slow buttons or non blocking opponents
2-Use shatter to surpass blocking opponents
3-Use an instant overhead with J. LK/MK, but doesn’t lead to combo
4-WALK to use a throw
5-Block

-Stand blocking wins against 1, 3, loses to 2 and 4, ties with 5. If Glacius is in range to hit with his sweep, he will get the knockdown
-Crouch blocking wins 1, loses to 2, 3(but allows you to punish him before getting grounded) and 4, and ties with 5

So, if I block one of Glacius cold shoulders, chances are that I’m going to crouch block, trying to react to 2 and 4, winning against 1, and getting only minor damage from 3. If Glacius choses 5, then we are in neutral, with the difference that he is closer now, and if he goes for cold shoulder at this distance, now he will be on range to be punished

IMO Glacius’ cold shoulder is fine, I don’t see a problem with its pushback or frame data.

A far reaching special like this doesn’t have to unsafe. Glacius gives away his zoning if he gets blocked, and can be punished if he insists to do it over and over again, because he is closer.

Dunno people, just take a bit more time to take your turn back. Block his normals, react to shatter, and go.

I prefer to play against a happy cold slouder Glacius instead a good zoning Glacius. Just be patient, block him another time, and punish him on the correct range

3 Likes
22

-shrug- I dunno, I personally think Glacius has more than enough ways to keep cold shoulder safe as-is - I don’t actually think of it as much of a risk at all to be honest.

The move is an unreactable special that becomes active itself pretty quickly (making it difficult to stuff), and can be combined with either puddle punch to forcibly take Glay’s turn back or hail to make Glacius not just safe, but often plus on block. The character is dangerous in that position because he has a great jab (that rivals many characters’ mediums for range) and throw (that comes out in five frames and also rivals some characters’ medium buttons). Even apart from the fact that it’s pretty tough to tell which shoulder Glacius has just done, it’s just not unreasonable or uncommon for him to have a hail out that he can use to make his unreactable screen traveling special safe or plus (and let’s not forget the light and med versions aren’t usually punishable anyway).

I was pretty firmly against the idea that Jago needed a nerf to med windkick - I think it was an interesting game design choice. I’m a lot less amenable to cold shoulder being similarly difficult to punish or check. The character’s options after it are comparable to anything pre-3.7 Jago ever had (DP, throw, jab->pressure), and he already has ways to make even the heavier versions not just safe, but plus.

Glacius isn’t Top 5 or anything, but him just being able to bully his way in the way he can is kind of silly. If Glacius wants in, he’s coming in (and his up close buttons aren’t bad enough now that he just categorically doesn’t want in).

10 Likes
23

i agree with this @STORM179

24

Iam sorry bae Glacius but you are a zonner , right? so you need some

when you abuse that yolo cold shoulder, NO mORE push back and feel the pain just like jago feels naw !!! AHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHah

After that i think it wil be a great time for this

When you abuse cold shoulder…, and i could play you more conscienciously and get better.

anyway i still wil stay playin with you, cause you are my best zonner and killer!!!

25

Looks at @G0tei13Izaragi’s post with the three pics And this is why I don’t go to the hellfields known as the Killer Instinct Forums.

5 Likes
26

If I could propose a change, not change the frame data unless necessary, but right now it seems to put about 2-2.5 character lengths of distance which there are not many normals in the game that go that far aside from Glacius, Kan-Ra, Gargos and those with 2/3 - 3/4 screen command normals(I know not all are commands but just a relative term). The issue is that any meterless attempt to punish a shoulder right now is either going to whiff, be puddle punched or just jumped out of. If it had Half the pushback, I still think some Jabs would miss, but mediums could be a reasonable punish. If he is -5 He could still risk the DP on it but it isn’t as in his favor, he has to actually risk something at that distance to puddle punch or jump. It won’t be free. Just the amount I’ve gotten away with playing Glacius and using Cold shoulder setups like it wouldn’t matter the calibur of player I’m against. If I get the space to cold shoulder, there is no reason not to, it forces them to block or react and in most situations blocking is what you can only react fast enough with. I really think the only change needed is knockback. Or Tighten the window on it’s pushback like, specifically max or near max range. Right now unless it’s close to point blank, you get the relative safety it passively provides. Unless anyone can provide ways for a majority of the cast to reliably deal with this type of “pressure”? I’ll call it that for now, it’s a little overwhelming. Like all things in fighting games, there are ways to deal with it. Block, continue to block, back dash, but those options leave the ball in Glacius’ court. It’s listed as a pretty “unsafe” move but the paper doesn’t reflect in game. Even at -5 Puddle punch will come out before anything that can reach it unless meter is spent. But if he can force you to spend meter because he cold shoulders, it depends on the startup of your shadow. He can most likely liquidize or still puddle punch if he hits the -2 window due to the startup of your shadow. So, even the “winning” scenarios have flaws against it too. It’s also not matchup specific, otherwise I wouldn’t worry too much, I can just learn a different matchup with a different character if Glacius is my downfall.

3 Likes
27

Seconded. Honestly, you kinda took what I was gonna say next and made it way clearer. Although, an incredi-stupid part of me wants to wish for light C.Shoulder to be either -1 or ±0.

28

I mean… Isn’t that the point? Just like it’s infuriating to be stuck in a 50/50 guess fest with flipout characters or having Thunder Sammamish your face all day. Good players make your life miserable - on purpose. That’s the game.

EDIT: So what I’m seeing is let’s nerf a character so that people don’t have to deal with his offense. It’s not “broken” nor is the character especially potent in the context of KI but people don’t like it… shrug You can block cold shoulder. Or jump over it. Or stuff it - especially if Glacius is spamming it. I don’t know, as a Glacius player a random cold shoulder at an unpredictable time is a workable strategy, but I don’t win many games just spamming it across the screen.

3 Likes
29

Not only does it not lead to combo, but plenty of characters (especially with meter) are going to recover from this and punish Glacius by the time he hits the ground. This works to deal (what, 2%?) damage in a scramble against an unprepared opponent but it’s not a great option.

1 Like
30

True, I’m not debating that point at all. Just stating the obvious really, those other things you mentioned are tricky to work around too but since this thread is related to our oh so beloved ice alien I’d thought I just throw my two cents in.

1 Like
31

As has already been mentioned, IG pays close attention as to how any character is performing, and I promise, if Glacius is determined to be “too good” or if Cold Shoulder is too strong (I agree with Storm in respect to this), they will make the needed changes. It won’t end the world and it won’t really do anything for people who still struggle with this match up. If Cold Shoulder is nerfed, most good Glacius players will still be good, and those who struggle with this match up will still struggle with this match up.

btw… buff Sadira! :smiley:

1 Like
32

You can’t jump over it on reaction to its startup, it travels too fast (maybe at max range, it’s kinda like Fulgore Blade dash. At certain distances, jumping isn’t an option), and we are not talking about literally spam nothing but cold shoulder, but the benefits a zoner gets while more or less playing the rushdown game in a sense. Zoners should be excellent at creating distance, not closing distance unless through a setup. Cold Shoulder will get him in safely on its own. He doesn’t even need to shadow cancel it. It’s a move that on block, the things that can out right punish it through frame data, cannot punish it solely based on the pushback. On top of this character has very high damage among the cast as a whole, not just zoners, he is by far the most damaging zoner. Characters like Mira, Thunder, do more damage yes, but Glacius isn’t very far behind.

33

Yeah, cold shoulder not jumpable at all in a practical sense.

Lest anyone misunderstand though, I’m not actually clamoring for nerfs to Glacius. I think IG could leave him perfectly alone and the game would still be in a great state. For what it’s worth, I think the pushback on cold shoulder isn’t really the issue here so much as the changes that were made to puddle punch. Earlier on it made sense that Glay not really be punishable on his single non-reactable special, because that special brought him close where he tends to struggle anyway.

Glacius still struggles up close, but not nearly to the degree he did before. Fully invul puddle is just too potent a reversal for most characters to ever really be comfortable having Glacius in that space, so him being able to dive on in of his own volition kind of at will is frustrating. A lot of the angst is psychological, because Glay could kinda do the exact same thing even with the non-invincible puddle punch after cold shoulder. But psychological damage is oftentimes the most potent kind, and so people complain.

2 Likes
35

I’m just so exhausted about all the talk for nerfs/buffs. Even if the change in question is not unreasonable.

You guys should just play the game you have, and try to study up on solutions as best you can.

As awesome as patches can be for fixing the game and moving it towards better balance, it feels like fighting games these days are more about politics than they are just practicing.

17 Likes
36

I’m with you on this @Infilament. Tbh I want the meta to evolve and people to get around this without causing a major change to things. (Listens to Humanz while reading other threads)

37

The main thing is just… is a character ever fine? Maybe they’re fine if they’re like supremely mid-tier and have no chance of ever hurting anyone in a match. But as soon as a character has a tool strong enough to cause an annoyance, people talk about nerfing it. Doesn’t even matter the character… we’ve talked about every single character in this game like this, in some form or another, since KI launched.

Eventually the game will stopped getting patched (whenever that is), and then what you have is what you have. Glacius might still have fast cold shoulder with pushback into a DP guess, and forum posts asking for nerfs to the move won’t be useful. If they do change this Glacius thing, whether spurred on by this post or not, then the focus will just shift to the next thing that’s maybe slightly strong and require a bit of thought to deal with.

It just never ends… it’s a permanent cycle of suggesting changes with nobody ever happy about anything, because the target keeps switching and the requirements for suggesting something is too strong keep getting lower. And the end result is an overall loss for the FGC, in my opinion. More focused on playing the metagame around getting stuff nerfed/buffed than exploring character tools or labbing up solutions.

Obviously, there are some things that are so strong that they need changing, and I think the team has done a pretty good job on identifying that throughout the game’s life, for the most part. But when we start getting into “huh, this is mildly annoying and sometimes I get hit by this risky move,” I think people need to take a step back and evaluate what their end goal is.

7 Likes
38

No matter what IG does, they will never be able to please everybody. They can’t. It is impossible. The reality is, nerfing/ buffing is always a slippery slope to tread upon. It’s the Butterfly Effect. You change one frame here and you get rain in Central Park instead of sunshine. It is hard for any dev to predict how a change here and there will impact the overall game over time.

Sadira is a perfect example. Of all the characters, more people found ways to circumvent the combo system (without causing the game to crash – looking at you Kan Ra and Spinal) and create nigh inescapable unbreakable combos with her. In S2, while you could break a lot of her stuff, more people found ways to use her Instinct + cash out glitches to create 90% damage combos.

In their attempt to make her fair, they nerfed her to the ground, and then tried to resolve the matter by giving her a LOT more tools. Yeah she can now do a LOT more, but it also made her a LOT more complex. It sent her right to the bottom tier.

Obviously she isn’t a bad character, but most people, including yourself have stated that she does need a bit more damage to her punches so that Sadira players don’t have to literally depend solely on resets to get anywhere with her, as is the way right now.

I would like Sadira to be buffed enough to help me against Gargos, BUT realistically speaking that is impossible due to how they both play. If IG was to buff Sadira in such a way that she’d be able to go toe to toe with Gargos, this would swing her even matches and even her winning matches to far in the opposite way. Conversely, if they were to nerf Gargos enough to allow Sadira to go even with him, they would probably better off just removing him from the game, as he would have to lose out on a lot of stuff and thus he’d become useless in much of his match ups.

Sadira/Gargos will never be anywhere even in this build and thus the only way I’ll be reliably able to beat him, is simply learning the match up.

Devs should never nerf/buff to please people. They should nerf/buff because it is good for the meta. In all that I’ve seen with IG, they aren’t nerfing/buffing because they are trying to please a certain group, but because they are looking at the over all meta and seeing if one character is doing far better than they should.

The way I look at it is this, if one or two people are griping about something, the likelihood IG changes something is small, (unless it is game breaking of course), HOWEVER, if several people, pros included, are complaining about a specific character and moveset, then the likelihood of IG taking a deeper look at this situation is guaranteed.

The reason it will never end is because it isn’t an exact science. Just like Apple iPhone software updates.

39

To be fair I wouldn’t miss a cast where half the cast has a matchup advantage against my character. :sob:

Jokes aside only problem situations should be changed at this point in development. Characters with massive abuse cases and oppressive gameplans should be nerfed only if that tactic can be challenged accordingly. (Launch Eyedol - Instinct Shadow DP) Other characters who are really struggling against most situations should get less numbers buffs and more flavor of life buffs. It should fit within their play style but not be overbearing as well.

Most of the meta makes sense, with certain characters only getting a slight advantage but nothing unwinnable like other FGs. People often talk about how characters like Sadira and Kan-Ra needs to be buffed due to how easy it is to bully them. We often forget how oppressive these characters are. Even I don’t want S1 Sadira or relive S2 Launch Kan-Ra. Most relied on overpowered states and characters with flowchart mentalities.

Honestly though I wish more people spend more time in the lab studying and less time pleading for a situation to be nerfed or their character gains a massive buff. Hell I still find more Sadira tech each day that can be beneficial for more people to learn then to wait for 3.8 to give the buffs or nerfs that are “deserved”.

40

I need to put this on a poster

41

So I decided to see exactly what the frames are on those max distance shoulders. Heavy Shoulder is actually 0 on block, Medium shoulder is +1 on block, light shoulder is +2 on block. Granted these are very specific distances but when they do occur the pause in the late frame shoulder is noticeable enough for the Glacius player to take advantage of.