Unfortunately at the moment I can’t play matches due to issues with teredo, but I understand the system fairly well and I have enough experience with other games to figure out what’s good without too much difficulty. I think this character has great potential and in terms of running his basic gameplan he’s not too difficult to play, but throughout the match you will need to play a very tempered, deliberate game of resource management.
Let’s start with talking about his gunshot:
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How many grounded gunshots should you use? You can fire in a burst of up to three shots, but as I see it that’s rarely going to be worth it unless it’s going to close out a round. As far as using it in neutral, two shots with the second fairly delayed generally achieves the same thing without burning through resources as quickly. 13% vs 16%–I’ll stick to two. Jump forward gunshots are a bit different but we’ll get to that in a moment.
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Jump back gunshot can be confirmed into shadow mercy’s demise relatively easily. You don’t even need two shots; as long as it was fired around the apex of his jump or after, he can confirm a single hit from fairly far away. Too far and shadow mecy’s demise will whiff, though. This is still very strong, though they can go for a break.
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Jump forward gunshot is a strong approach, but may end up being fairly expensive. Consider the difference between jump forward gunshot and standing gunshot or jump back gunshot: standing gunshot doesn’t leave you vulnerable after a single blocked shot, while jump back gunshot will leave him vulnerable after a single shot at the start of the jump, but also leaves him far enough away to be difficult to punish. A 2-shot will keep him SOMEWHAT safe but is shadow counterable and is not a tight blockstring if he fires the first shot at the start of his jump. To keep yourself as safe as possible on a jump forward gunshot, you’ll need a 3-shot. Still, in most cases a 2-shot should be fine, and regardless of the number of shots used you can do mercy’s demise when you land for a one chance break into ender. The damage difference between using 2 and 3 shots is significant too–a little more than 7%.
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Converting air gunshot requires shadow meter, but converting ground gunshot requires instinct. Using a delayed 2-shot you can confirm the second hit and instinct cancel it, then do a jump forward 2-shot, any version of mercy’s demise, and an ender. This is a one chance break for 36%, and it’s a guess break situation as the different versions of mercy’s demise aren’t visually distinct and have identical startup when they’re close enough. And, since you’ve activated instinct and have a shield, you can tack on a grenade at the end of the combo for additional setups.
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Tacking on gunshots is an expensive way to add unbreakable damage to a combo. It’s mostly worth doing to end rounds, and not a good use of resources otherwise. The most you’ll get from it is 6% which isn’t that big of a damage boost considering how precious your shots are. However, if your opponent has a grenade on them and the timing of your launch wasn’t quite right the carbine tack on becomes more valuable–doing one or two carbine shots to keep them in the air just a little longer can allow you to recapture and continue your combo. For example, if you throw them and do 3 shots your throw will do 15%. However if you throw them while they’re stuck and use 2 shots to allow a recapture, then do mercy’s demise into damage ender, you’ll do 26% on a one chance guess break.
Now, his grenades:
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His grenade projectile travels quickly, but since it doesn’t deal any hitstun it can be punished if you use it from too close and the opponent is expecting it. However, his grenade lob arcs are all very strong in different ways and even if the grenade doesn’t hit the opponent it will act as a trap wherever it lands.
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The stagger from his grenades is very long, long enough that arbiter can confirm the hit from just a hair closer than fullscreen using heavy mercy’s demise. However, from that range heavy mercy’s demise is your only option to continue the combo so it will be a break/counter break mixup. From closer, you can use other versions which turns it into a guess break situation.
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Tacking on a grenade at the end of a combo has more potential to go bad than using gunshot, as it can lead to a situation where your own grenade opens a combo for your opponent. On the other hand, it’s not nearly as expensive–grenades replenish slowly, but they DO replenish. If you have a shield active you shouldn’t hesitate to tack on a grenade at the end of a combo.
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His grenade reversal knocks both players down leaving you roughly even on hit. However with a shield active arbiter ignores the hitstun of the move, leaving him at a significant advantage on block. The grenade does low damage too, allowing him to absorb 3 grenade reversals while still having a sliver of shield left. If the grenade connects instead of being blocked though, it will take off more of his shield, only letting him use 2 per shield. The grenade has a pretty good hitbox for AA too, but without shield you won’t be getting a significant advantage from doing so.
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The grenade forces a stuck opponent to block or somehow move through the explosion. You can use this to quickly get to close range, using heavy truth seeker timed so the grenade explodes as he’s travelling to the opponent, not allowing them a chance to hit him out of it. This is a strong approach, but there’s another layer to it. If you condition them to expect the overhead as an approach, when you’re closer up they may still default to high block which gives you an opportunity to tag them with a low using 2MK. Just keep in mind that if you use 2MK xx mercy’s demise for the launch to allow you to do the low earlier, you’ll need to cancel to shield or instinct to keep yourself safe from the grenade if they block it.
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In the corner, tacking on a grenade after a forward throw gives arbiter enough time to juggle with light attacks. He can flip out with 5LK and do a reset using the grenade, but if he has resources to spare he can also turn this into a combo by doing 5LP xx mercy’s demise xx energy shield, 2HKx3, instinct cancel, then any juggle that will keep them airborne long enough for the grenade to recapture.
When continuing a combo with a grenade on your opponent, you have a few basic options: ender into recapture, ignore the grenade with your shield, or use a shadow move to avoid the grenade.
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If you already have a shield on, you don’t need to worry about any of this! If you don’t, instinct will work just fine, as it will immediately fill your shield and allow you to keep comboing through the grenade.
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As far as using enders goes, mercy’s demise (knockdown) is the most practical as it’s his fastest ender. Truth seeker (bounce) ender is probably never a good idea, as it’s slower than mercy’s demise and does less damage. Prophet’s bane (damage) ender does substantially more damage than mercy’s demise but has a very slow animation which makes it difficult to use outside of niche scenarios.
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He has two options in his shadow moves, and each have their benefits and drawbacks. Shadow truth seeker is projectile invincible which allows it to pass through the explosion. It adds a sizeable chunk of damage to the combo, but is breakable. On the other hand, energy shield into grenade recapture is unbreakable, adds about 7% to your health pool, and leads to a guess break situation with mercy’s demise that can go straight into ender. The combo will do substantially less damage, but the shield health he gains is guaranteed. It’s up to you which situation you think is preferable.
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After doing an ender into grenade recapture, you should tack on another grenade, then do mercy’s demise straight into damage ender. The grenade you tacked on will recapture, and if you tack on another grenade…you get the idea. Doing this will quickly rack up damage using moves you have to guess to break.
After sweep into mercy’s demise, you’ll need a grenade on them to continue into any meaningful damage. The problem there is that, like with recapturing after an ender, the grenade’s timer may not work out for the recapture. You have three ways to adjust this timing.
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The first, and least practical, is shadow truth seeker. If you already have a shield on you, you can use this to delay their fall and let your shield eat the grenade hit. Timing this is very difficult, it will often whiff or get only one hit if you try it. It’s not possible at all after LP mercy’s demise because the cancel can’t be delayed enough. Whether or not it’s possible after MP seems to be character dependent, and it SEEMS to be universally possible after HP but has awkward timing.
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The second is to instinct cancel and follow up with whatever you want. Not much to say here, other than that this is the most limited of the three due to requiring instinct meter.
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The third, and most practical, is to cancel to energy shield and follow up. You won’t have time to get all the followups you can get with instinct, but you don’t really need all those options. You have plenty of options with your normals and mercy’s demise as well as gunshots, and if you use gunshots they won’t have any option to break before the recapture.
Energy shield is more than just a reversal and a way to gain health.
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Energy shield has 26 total frames, while mercy’s demise has 38 frames of recovery. LP mercy’s demise cancelled into energy shield will make the shield whiff, leaving him fairly close at substantial frame advantage. If it hits he can continue the combo, and if it’s blocked he has a chance to mix the opponent up. Either way he gains health and is put into a beneficial situation. Just keep in mind that if you’re too close and/or in the corner, on some characters the energy shield may connect or be blocked, and you’ll lose out on that juicy frame advantage.
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Since all of arbiter’s anti airs are slow, if your opponent jumps over a normal and you can’t use his other AAs in time, energy shield will work fine to knock them away so you can start zoning again. If you already have a shield up, though, the reward for doing this will be exceptionally low.
Getting frame advantage:
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Arbiter’s 3HK command normal (the AA attack with the carbine) is a ludicrous +10 on block, with 12 startup frames and 5 active frames. This is by far his best meaty attack, and doing two or three in a row is a legit frame trap. It’s also his only normal that combos into MP truth seeker other than cloven kick (6MK) in the corner.
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cl.5MK isn’t as good as 3HK on block/hit, being +3/+9, but starts up 3 frames faster, and if you’re out of range for cl.5MK you’ll still get 5MK, instead of whiffing the move. On hit, it will link to any of his light moves, and any of his MK moves aside from 6MK. Be aware though that linking to his MK moves will be a 1f link, with a particularly awkward timing.
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MP and HP truth seeker are both plus on block/hit, being +2/+15 and +3/+18 respectively. However, these are his slowest attacks by far, at 27 and 31 frames of startup each. Still, they both move forward a good chunk of the screen, and as mentioned above using grenades you can cover the startup to get in.
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Shadow truth seeker and mercy’s demise are, on block/hit, +3/+15 and +6/+10 respectively. However, like most shadow moves they’re vulnerable to shadow counters. Using energy shield to cancel mercy’s demise is overall a much better way to spend a bar to be plus, creating more frame advantage, giving him a shield, and not giving your opponent an easy shadow counter.
Videos:
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A video by TouBenF showing some arbiter reset and combo extension concepts.
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Another video by ogty showing a variation on essentially the same thing as the above.
If I find more stuff like this, I’ll add it here. Hope this helps people! If you have anything you want me to add to this post let me know.
