This is just some stuff that @aWholio and I have been talking about for the past few days. Since we know there’s a fairly significant balance update coming we figured it would be worth putting together our thoughts on how characters could be adjusted. Not all of the ideas are based on a character being too strong or not strong enough, and the list isn’t comprehensive–there’s stuff on the list for less than half the characters. Dunno if he has any input on this but I thought it would be worth sharing what we came up with here in hopes of starting a reasonable discussion. These aren’t things I’m demanding be in the game or anything like that. Again, it ain’t that serious.
i respectfully disagree with your shago nerfs. Those moves are easily punished, anything beyond that is more on slow reactions. If you cant react to my -17 frames blocked footdive then I deserve to land safely.
I like the Cinder thermometer idea as another indicator of his fired-up state. While I’m not huge on “meters for everyone,” I think this is a common sense change given that the current method can sometimes be a bit hard to spot.
I was also wondering if you could expand on this a bit as it pertains to Sadira:
I agree that she needs some type of addition to her air arsenal that reinforces her status as the juggling character, especially when she lacks so much on the ground and so much of her move set is practically designed to get opponents in to the air.
In my season 4 rebalance thread (the one you loved deeply lol), I suggested giving her a mid-air linker so that she could actually do full, breakable combos that follow the regular format and cash them out mid-air.
I also thought it’d be nice if she had a recapture so that she could start a combo on the ground, continue it in the air and finish it on the ground. Obviously, there’d need to be significant adjustments in terms of her KV meter, but I thought that both of these would go a long way in reestablishing what made her unique in the first place.
Do you think that a mid-air linker or a recapture would be too much given that you’re talking about adding a hard knockdown property to widows drop that drops the opponent to the ground with Sadira, giving her a chance for a set up? That sounds pretty strong to me, but it also sounds more like a practical evolution than what I proposed.
Also definitely curious to see what her new combat trait might be and if it makes her stronger in the air or if they kind of move away from that facet of her play style.
Playing vs various cinders I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it used. I may have seen it in match archives I’ve watched but I really can’t recall ever seeing it. It really doesn’t seem to have that much utility to me other than if you’re REALLY desperate to go through a projectile while in the air, which the new version could still do. Maybe useless was the wrong word, rather it seems to have an extremely narrow application that makes the move feel very underwhelming. And I don’t think he’s an overpowered character, but you don’t have to be overpowered to be needlessly obnoxious to punish due to a lack of visual clarity in your systems. Same goes for his absurd damage from shadow fission. It’s not enough to make him overpowered, but it’s definitely out of line compared to the rest of the cast, by a significant amount.
I don’t think sadira should have a recapture. If she’s going to be a hardcore air character, I want her air combos to mostly remain juggles. I just think she should have more options while she’s in the air.
Midair linkers could work, maybe? But I’m just having difficulty picturing how that would work while still making visual sense.
Totally respect that. I definitely see where you’re coming from there. I’d also prefer more options while in the air, and if it’s one or the other, I’d definitely take more air options, I just thought it’d be nice to have both.
Well, she’d either need a new move entirely, or a variation on what she currently does. Maybe a move where she makes a web in mid-air that she automatically wall bounces off of an then spirals toward her opponent in one quick motion? Or maybe she can use web-cling as a linker, but when she’s in mid-air, she automatically traps the opponent in a web while first to hold them in place? Ya know… Launcher, auto, Web-cling, auto, HP Widows Bite ender. Obviously you’d need the KV available and it’d have to be breakable.
Honestly, given how limited she is on the ground, I wouldn’t mind seeing two different options for mid-air linkers, both for variety-sake and to further drive home the emphasis and usefulness of getting the opponent off the ground. But I’m getting ahead of myself (as I tend to do when talking about character adjustments).
Back to your original post though (the reason why I wandered in here in the first place), I also like the idea of making Riptor’s up-flame breath launch the opponent higher for more reliable juggles.
Anything else you’d like to see for any other characters?
I’m not sure this is true since I don’t see good cinder players using this. When you say HP>HP>LP is that one of his chain combos? In which cas those are breakable.
Yeah Rash’s sweep is pretty ridiculous, I’ll admit it…but you don’t have to be a jerk about it. Just let me keep disregarding footsies with that move, and it’ll be fun.
I didn’t say just because people aren’t using it it’s not there. But if a low damage, juggle heavy character like Cinder has a one chance, one meter 46% combo I would expect people to use it. I’m asking you for more information. What does HP>HP>LP mean? Just two standing HPs and then an LP? If those are a combo then then shadow fission shouldn’t be an opener and it should be breakable. If that’s not the case then it’s a bug and should be reported.
I’m surprised Arbiter isn’t immediately on a list like this. His jumping gun combos are very degenerate. His bullets are never spent on the ground because shooting while jumping back and forth leads to so much more on hit and moves him to wherever he wants to be. I think I’ve noticed that this draws the most disdain from prominent non-KI players in Twitch chats. Also, having an unpunishable reversal (it should stagger him) is kinda dumb, just like how tacking a grenade on after a damage ender (he shouldn’t be able to) is also dumb.
As for Thunder, I’d rather not have IG completely go back on a balance change that they already made. Rather than removing the invulnerability on his light DP, I’d rather have them take away his meter ender and make it his HKD ender instead. For some reason, his Sammamish ender is a launcher ender when he wants it and a HKD when he wants it. OR if he’s still going to be a grappler that flies across the screen and flips you out into 5-way mixups while still having good meterless defense, he shouldn’t still be doing top-tier damage. It doesn’t make sense that RAAM lives the full grappler struggle, while Thunder can say “lol zoning” and do just as much damage as him when he gets close.
I meant to write 2%, but still: Shadow fission as an opener does 18% and immediately builds to level 2 ender, on its own. Shadow eye laser as an “opener” does 13% and can only be combod from with shadow blade dash. Even with the buff his only combo options after it would cost additional meter and would only be medium or heavy. I think that’s much more reasonable than 24% up front, any strength followup you want, and >40% on the cashout. Keep in mind cinder builds meter normally and has a battery ender, while fulgore’s abnormal meter gain and reliance on meter for neutral mean he will much less frequently have meter to spare for combos. If not the damage buff, at least the hitstun buff so the move has a use.
Is that a change? I thought his target combos were all breakable (and allowed counter breaks).
I don’t see 26% damage with meter being a huge problem since Jago has a lot of DP shenanegans that come close. What’s a f.HK into DP for example? But a 46% one chance seems high. I will have to test this out.
I know. It just sounds counter productive. As for sweeps across the board…no what they need to do is fix the hurtbox of almost all characters while they are being juggled. Since alot of them are smaller then they should be. Thus making things whiff.
Also about this…“projectile invincible” on emergence. What types of projectiles is he going to be immune to?
I mean…they’re breakable IN COMBOS. Not otherwise.
To give you perspective on what 26% means: that’s the amount sadira gets for the full sequence of fierce > shadow opener > heavy manual > damage ender. He’s getting the same damage from his first breakable hit that she’s getting for her entire combo, and they’re both supposed to be low damage characters.
If you compare various sweep hitboxes you’ll find that some characters’ sweeps have a significantly shorter hitbox than others, which is probably the biggest factor in making it hard to juggle into them.
What types of projectiles…all it really should be is things he can destroy with the hitbox of the move but I dunno if the system would let it work that way.
I know the sweep hitboxes. Most are low to the ground (as they should be). Why does every character need to juggle into sweep? Fix the hurtboxes on the juggled opponent instead. Best to not tamper with the hitboxes.
Types of projectiles. You know the ones that bypass projectile cruch moves etc, the ones that count as “character” projectiles. You know those ones.