Possible Solution To Nerf Fulgore

We all know Fulgore is high tier. The character has some of the best moves in the game however his biggest weakness in the game is that his meter is limited. His meter charges up over time and performing combos makes it go faster. It’s also understandable why he has special cancels that spend a pip because of the “lack of meter gain.” This is where Fulgore becomes such a dominate character. His meter gain is a resource for his aggressive game before you can play aggressive you should zone out and combo when you can. This is where I feel Fulgore is too good. Having 1 a projectile that you can shoot multiple times and follow up with is good but 2 which is the bigger issue a projectile that not only goes full screen but also is great up close and safe up close. Eye lasers are amazing I won’t deny that. The light and medium versions have to be blocked low, they both are +2 on block and can easily lead to one of the best and easiest mix ups up close. The heavy eye laser can easily be made safe as long as you have meter which paired with his already good projectile it’s gonna happen pretty easily. I’m not saying nerf the character entirely though but instead limit the character even more because he is such a threat. The best way to fix this in my book actually was answered with a season 3 character. The Arbiter has 3 extra bars to watch: carbine, grenade, and shields. Managing them is sometimes hard but it is done. Fulgore should have something similar to this but slightly different. Next to his reactor bar will be 3-5 red bars. These represent how many times you can shoot an eye laser. Use any eye laser uses 1 bar however you can reload a bar by putting the input in for charging the reactor. This touches the nostalgic feeling of charging like in season 1 but now it only boost the eye laser. It would act similar to the instinct version and in instinct you would get both the meter pip and the eye laser pip. If you don’t have any bars Fulgore will still do the animation but he won’t shoot anything out. This nerf will nerf Fulgore but still keep him as a threat. The frame data on the eye lasers would still be the same and you can’t charge up in between rounds and you start with only 3 bars. This limits “brain dead” zoning but still allows it as long as you have the resource for it. You are limited in order to use Fulgore’s other options.

Again though guys this is my opinion please leave your opinion to how we can nerf Fulgore.

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Fulgore hands down, is one of the best characters in the game, if not THE best character at the moment. He dominated in S1 and he was even more powerful in S2. This biggest draw back for Fulgore though is his steep learning curve (this is why he hasn’t been featured in the “OP Plweeze nurf” threads. IG has always tried to balance Fulgore by tweaking his damage and or his normals, but honestly I think they are balancing him wrong.

When Fulgore was originally designed he didn’t gain meter PERIOD, unless you physically charged him up. On the flip side, once Fulgore got meter he would become over powered. The key to beating Fulgore was to bully him.

The problem with this new Fulgore is that he gains meter no matter what, and while if he is bullied he may not gain as much meter, he doesn’t need nearly any to be nasty. With just two pips he can safely start canceling moves from teleport, this then gives the Fulgore player ample time to get on the aggressive and gain even more meter.

The fact is, if you play somebody who knows how to correctly use Fulgore, there is a 90% chance you’ll lose. Once he gets meter, its pretty much game over, unless you are a pro player. Sadly a good 90% of us aren’t.

The best way to “balance” Fulgore isn’t to nerf his normals, his strength, or his specials, but simply make everything take more meter.

At the moment, it only takes 1 Pip to cancel a move. 4 Pips to use Shadow. With full Meter Fulgore can get at least 3 Shadow attacks, and if his engine is at full capacity, he’ll have another Shadow almost by the time he’s finished with the last one.

I suggest making cancellable attacks take 2 Pips instead of 1 and Shadows taking 5 pips instead of four. I would also make to where his meter gain completely stops, if he’s not attacking.

Once he starts fighting, the meter begins to build. It will keep building faster the longer he keeps attacking. If however the opponent becomes the aggressor and Fulgore starts taking damage, it will continue to slow, and if they don’t regain the momemtum, it will stop entirely.

I like this because you aren’t nerfing his damage, normals, specials… just making it harder for Fulgore’s to play it safe. They will have to actually manage their meter.

that is one thing i was thinking about but I thought people would just say that his meter gain is fine where it’s at. His limited meter gain isn’t truly limited if he gains it all the time.

Nope. That is a problem in a way. This means he can’t shadow counter as easily which means he is screwed in pressure. He can’t do a thing already. Keep in mind frame traps work well against Fulgore. Personally,as far as nerfs go,it would be to slightly slow down his meter gain,or change his instinct. I would like his instinct to be changed. The change would be the meter gain starts at half of max and can’t drop. Auto doubles give him a pip. This way,he can’t gain a whole bunch of meter easily just by popping instinct. Another option would be to remove him from the game which would make me cry in a corner and quit KI.

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That’s the problem though Sasuke991…Fulgore SHOULD be pathetic under pressure. Right now, he isn’t. All he needs is one pip, and he can start doing shenanighans. Needing one more pip for a Shadow Counter, isn’t too bad.

If they remove anybody, it needs to be Rash. :stuck_out_tongue:

Fulgore shouldn’t be removed… He just needs to be balanced better.

I don’t mind Shadow moves going to 5. I believe simply decreasing his meter gain or make it so getting hit or blocking lowers your spin speed way more can work better.

I like these changes versus nerfing any more of his normals. I still want to see Fulgore as an almighty T-1000 versus being turned into a GoBot. :stuck_out_tongue:

Just because I like people to be informed when they talk about stuff, Fulgore can’t pip cancel teleport at all. You’ll be forgiven for thinking he can (I thought he did for a long time as well), but teleport just has the property that it can be canceled into special moves faster than it can be canceled into blocking. Every time he does teleport -> something, he is not ever spending pips.

But teleport is not invincible startup and most of his teleport -> something stuff is actually unsafe (unless done meaty on you), it just happens really fast so it’s hard to keep in check.

Fulgore’s defense will always be okay; he has a meterless DP. That’s just about the best possible defense in any game. I dunno what else you could hope for, really. He also has the fastest backdash in the game at 18 frames.

Anyway, I don’t think the suggestions to balance Fulgore in this thread are that feasible. Fulgore gains meter while full screen away, while “doing nothing”, but he also doesn’t gain meter in the standard ways. Pressure strings where most characters will fill their entire bar will leave Fulgore with just 2 pips, which is one half of ONE bar. He gains meter slowly, but steadily, and that’s how the character works.

The thing that always annoyed me with Fulgore was DP into shadow eye laser being irritating to punish. But changing that won’t change his dominant neutral and wouldn’t drop him on anyone’s tier list, which is what the OP seems to have an issue with.

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I don’t see how this will work. Some characters will always be top tier by design, and fulgore is one of them. The only problem I’m seeing with fulgore is the teleport and the new system lighting changes. It is very hard to see fulgore on some stages when he teleports, but aside from that its fine, it has no invincibility and can’t be pip canceled, all you can do is cancel some of it’s recovery with an attack similar to how thunder used to be able to do the same with his DP.

I think they could do something about the teleport. Maybe add a more obvious visual cue like they did with glacius shatter, or revert the inputs to what they used to be, a dp motion like sims.

While fulgore may be pretty good at opening people up, his damage is average at best. Look at matches with nicky ns from combo breaker, most of his openings on the opponent would lead to less than 20%. You can actually kinda halt his meter gain outside of instinct due to how his spin speed diminishes greatly whenever he is knocked down. I know he is a strong character but observe the gaps in his pressure (which are very much present, by the way) and always take full advantage of the times in which he can’t shadow counter.

Fulgore doesn’t need any nerfs. He is finally sitting in a spot where he is just fine. He has a good set of tools with an less than average damage output because his meter is better used elsewhere. He will rarely if ever drop a 45-50% combo on you even with meter. A counter breaker and 2 meter gets an average of 55%. The biggest issue with Fulgore isn’t Fulgore. Its not my fault I practiced a good Fulgore and you didn’t lab the ways to beat him. If Fulgore was this dominating force that was overpowered and unbeatable with unreasonable situations, there would be more than just Nicky maining him. Fulgore hasn’t changed much in terms of tools and use of those tools since season 1. So why is he all of a sudden a problem now? Because people are lazy and don’t want to lab the matchup. They just want nerfs instead.

Fulgore is finally in a good place where with all the nerfs hes already gotten and yes there are LOTS, hes sitting good. He is also only +1 on his lasers not 2. If the frame data in the dojo is off it hasn’t been updated.

@anon26401541 If they make his teleport a DP motion, all moves that are invincible or move your character should be DP motions then. Spinals teleport, Hisako’s teleport, Cinders Flip Kick, TJ’s Vortex if you’re wanting to limit me via inputs then everyone else should have the same restriction.

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Exactly if you have multiple characters they can do a teleport the motion needs to be change for everyone or leave it alone honestly fulgore has had more nurffs than anyone in the roster he’s evolve or die he’s had enough nurffs

“If he was so good everyone would play him” is still a largely terrible argument. S2 Kan-Ra absolutely put people in ridiculous, unreasonable situations, and you still only saw about 3 Kan’s at high level play, because hey, he was actually pretty darn tough to play at that level. On the other side of the ledger, seemingly 70% of TJ’s dropped the character like a bad habit the moment he was no longer able to roll his way to freedom for everything, even though TJ’s S3 offense is way better than it was at the end of S2. There’s a lot to be said for character complexity influencing play.

This is something that I’ve seen Fulgore’s say before, and I feel like I have to challenge it. There’s a huge difference in Fulgore now relative to his play in S1. The two big changes being the reactor (obviously) and how his fireballs work (less obviously). No one seems to remember it, but S1 Fulgore didn’t actually have a vortex. He had a harder time getting his fireballs to hit meaty (he could only control the number of fireballs, not speed), and to pressure an opponent on knockdown meant he flat out couldn’t get meter most of the time. So Fulgore “vortex” play meant having no pips, or only having what you could get away with on an auto triple within combo. If he wanted pips to do stuff with, he had to give up pressure, which is pretty much the opposite of how he’s played now.

For the record, I think the S2 changes were good for Fulgore (S1 Gore was just too hard to play). But there’s a big difference between S1 Fulgore and how he can be played now. And while I agree that forcing a DP motion for teleport is ill-advised, there is little to no equivalence between that and Spinal or Hisako’s teleport. It’s a bad idea because it makes the character needlessly complex for lower level players while doing nothing at high level (Nicky’s pretty good at DP’s too), not because Fulgore’s teleports are equivalent to the others. They aren’t - Fulgore’s is better in most ways, and he largely gets to retain agency that other characters sacrifice when they commit to teleport moves.

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For those who want video proof.


Additional anti Fulgore-related material:

*Also note: his fierce laser into teleporting behind is a gimmick. You are not stunned enough to not do anything. Because of this, you should be punishing any attempted mix up behind you at all times.

Some characters can punish his pip cancels as well.

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Pretty much this. He isn’t some unstopable force, you have to learn how to fight him. I use that to my advantage people think they can do nothing so I just win. I play a lot of Fulgore he is my main I know his weaknesses and how to punish his teleports. It’s not my fault if someone didn’t lab the matchup, it’s not my fault people don’t play this awesome character. Play sets with Fulgores. Learn stuff. Lab stuff. Took me a while but I started labbing before went to the forums now.

You guys are mean. I’m not going to say whether or not he needs to be nerfed. I main him clearly I can’t be unbiased in that regard. What I will say is that this topic has come up before so it’s not the first time people have cried for nerfs. He has been nerfed, over and over again. And lastly speaking from experience, the first thing I notice when I switch off of fulgore to another character is oh my god I get shadow meter for playing defense. I think there are a lot of people who don’t understand the struggle of dealing with constant pressure and how limiting it is to not have meter to shadow counter.

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*shrug * You’ll have to forgive me for not buying the “Fulgore can’t shadow counter so defense is hard” complaint. S2 had a few characters who couldn’t really shadow counter on defense due to how terrible the start-up on the counters were, and those characters only had situational (at best) reversal options to boot. Fulgore has the fastest backdash in the game (18 frames regardless of pips) and a meterless, invincible DP - his defense is not bad.

And lest anyone be confused, I’m not advocating nerfing Fulgore. I just want Fulgore players to own up to the character’s strengths, and to quit downplaying his options like “oh this stuff will never work at high level” and such. The character is really, really good, and his shenanigans aren’t super easy to always stop even when you know the punishes, because Fulgore has good options to bait out bad punish attempts and generally gets to approach on his terms.

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[quote=“Infilament, post:8, topic:11163, full:true”]
Just because I like people to be informed when they talk about stuff, Fulgore can’t pip cancel teleport at all. You’ll be forgiven for thinking he can (I thought he did for a long time as well), but teleport just has the property that it can be canceled into special moves faster than it can be canceled into blocking. Every time he does teleport -> something, he is not ever spending pips.[/quote]

Thank you for confirming this, @Infilament. I thought I was crazy when I was trying to learn Fulgore. It seemed like I was cancelling teleport into specials but I was never using pips. I just assumed my execution was off and kept trying and trying and trying to get it down. I thought that maybe teleport didn’t pip cancel but then everyone seemed to think so and there was nothing to indicate it shouldn’t. I eventually just gave up and assumed my execution was crap.

Very happy to be affirmed that it wasn’t me.

I simply said the first thing I notice when I switch off him. I’ll forgive you nevertheless for suggesting that my personal observation is wrong. And sure we can go back to S2 for examples but it turns out we’re in S3 now. Shadow Counters are a much bigger part of the game. They’ve been standardized across the cast with rare exceptions where they are lacking (Kim-Wu). I didn’t say defense is hard, I said without meter dealing with pressure is a struggle. I also don’t think that his defense is bad, that doesn’t change the fact that I eat a lot more block strings on him than I do with any other character for the exact reasons I specified.

I’m not downplaying fulgore I’m stating facts. Without meter you can’t shadow counter that’s pretty black and white. If there’s any downplaying it’s your perception of shadow counters as a defensive tool in SEASON 3. I mean hell Mira was released with a mixup where IG has specifically said your best option is to shadow counter it.

Now to wrap this up, I think fulgore is great. I just don’t think he’s without weakness as some seem to suggest.

This is certainly news to me. If anything, this actually makes him scarier, I think. Now that I know this, I feel like he should expend pips to do it. That being said, I don’t know if that would be balanced or not. When he does do this, how much does it slow down his meter? I’m curious, because I imagine the teleport itself would slow down his meter-gain, but then he’d quickly be able to speed it up again because of his ability to mixup into physical attacks.