Inspired by @VerminatorX and recent events (before the rank crash), I’ve become more curious on how Eagle is viewed by the community.
Now I know most of the ragemail I receive are from people who have no idea how to fight him. But recently decent players (no names) have admitted to me that they believe Eagle has too much dirt going for him and not enough weaknesses.
Now for the longest time I’ve believed that Eagle is a well balanced character in where his weakness balances his strength. But clearly, not all think that. I want to know others opinions on this. (Btw no matter what responses I receive I’m still going to play him. Just be as truthful as you can with your responses.
I’ll have the a list of weakness and strengths here in case you need more info
Strengths:
-Decent Mobilty (Air and Ground)
-Ability to Double Jump (If bird is available)
-Ability to turn shadow slide safe (with bird)
-Ability to punish jumps over shadow slide (using bird)
-Ability to turn a grab into a flipout, hard knockdown, or cash out
-Ability to turn any unsafe/safe move into an advantageous situation (using screech)
-Ability to cross up quickly using wingspan
-Has one of the hardest to block setups in game (corner and open area)
-Strong Zoning
-Ability to call back resources using shadow
-Unblockable projectile
-Fast moving projectile
-Ability to move projectile in many angles
-Is able to use his bird to zone that can lead to flipouts
-Ability to use projectiles as overheads with setups
-Can stuff out shadow counters
-Best offense in game
And the most important one
-The power of character unfamiliarity
Weaknesses:
-Bad if not the worst defense in game
-No true wakeup option
-Bad AAs (situational AAs if best)
-No options to pressure without bird
-Limited arrows
-Risky mid range fighting (most characters have better options)
-Medium to low damage (Especially low after some setups)
-Two linkers (only one being mostly useful)
-Horrible if not the worst instinct in the game
-Instinct hurts pressure, making bird unreliable
-Requires much lab time (both for setups and muscle memory)
-Requires good MU knowledge and game knowledge to be successful (in my opinion)
And to emphasize even more
-No Defense
Now, I want to hear your opinions on the last character of the roster. Is he strong, weak, OP, braindead? Share your thoughts
I’d say he is not OP. He literally has no defense, if you knock him down, you can literally wakeup throw him to death like it’s SF5. His wakeup options are awful:
Wakeup with down+3kick - knock opponent down, propably get hit by his oki attempt anyway, game back in neutral
Backdash - could work, unless your enemy has multi hitting normals, then you’re in trouble
Also his pressure is easily stopped by early counter breaker, to catch him before he activates bird shenanigans. It’s a little risky, but you are in for guessing city anyway so why not trying.
The only real thing i saw, and still see, with Eagle is his ability to blow up otherwise punishable moves and situations with a free, replenishable over time resource.
Later in KI’s S3, i kinda noticed how a lot more attention was being paid to characters that had the ability to blow up Shadow Counters intentionally. Some can do it accidentally or passively, like Kan-Ra or Gargos. But there were a select few that had options to beat them. Fulgore was one (Kim Wu and Hisako being the others), and his ability to do so was deemed too strong and taken out of the game. To this day, i think that was a pretty unnecessary nerf to his toolkit. However, blowing up what is generally considered a strong, defensive, read based option is balanced out by the fact that Fulgore needed resources to do it. Eagle can do it for free and he is quite often at an advantageous position afterwards, if not in a full combo. There are very rare cases i know of where Eagle is at a disadvantage. And honestly, before 3.9, the argument would have probably been a unified ‘yes’ that he is overpowered since he could cover throw techs, make counter breakers safe, make shadow counters safe, KV-less Skyfall, corner arrow loops, etc.
Having said that, i feel like he still is not overpowered though. Yes, the ability for Eagle to deny that, and most fairly standard punishes, is extremely strong. So are, by comparison, the options of a lot of other cast members around him. Yet, i feel it’s weighted against the character’s damn near inability to defend himself when he’s on his back and an instinct that elicits no real reason to ever not attempt to pressure Eagle at all times.
I think we will never actually understand how good or bad Eagle really is. The character was released too late in KI’s life and most people in this community are not lab monsters anyway. He has enough weaknesses on defense that there will be opportunities to kill him no matter how strong he gets, fortunately.
As far as Eagle goes, I don’t think he “blows up shadow counters” like Fulgore did. Fulgore waited until a shadow counter happened and then reacted with a punish. Eagle uses moves pre-emptively to stuff potential shadow counters (which may or may not come). Pretty different things, and Eagle’s variation is basically just “safe pressure”.
I don’t really think Eagle’s ability to make stuff safe is that big of a deal. You can treat slide as a safe on block opener, except in rare situations where he doesn’t have bird (instead of thinking about it as “should be unsafe but he keeps making it safe”). Similar to Hisako where you can’t punish rekka with a shadow move due to parry cancel, except in rare situations. If Eagle wants to waste a bar doing “random” shadow slide in neutral, I think that’s fine by me. It’s not too dissimilar to just doing regular slide and you can hit confirm off his arrows without needing bird anyway.
Thats sad, we might never see Eagles full potential. OP, nah. Top ~10 candidate, for me yes. Maybe we will see someone in KIWC 2k18 picking Eagle, whooping butt left and right with an unimaginable tech.
Saying from my casual player viewpoint I think Eagle is just fine, I wouldn’t give top 10 for him. I watch a lot of matches (I think I watch more matches than play actually lol), also watched your Eagle in action (watched your Eagle against @SneerfulWater57’s Kim and @STORM179’s Hisako I think. You has a very good Eagle!). I’ll admit that I came to respect him more after I saw Amenty’s Eagle in action on these last days, he went well against Rico’s Omen, a character that I thought was one of his worst MU’s. But I still think that he has some very bad MU’s that he can’t do much, like Rash (who eat his arrows, just to worse things to Eagle) and his lack of wakeup options is his main flaw, he’s very easy to pressure actually.
If I’m not mistaken @STVeronezi has an Eagle. He’s a high level player too.
Eagle’s offense is borderline in the OP category but that’s because his defense is absolutely craptastic. It may take a risk to get in but once you’re in Eagle has little to no options. Those options can be baited or just stuffed with proper reads or setups anyways. Treat him like Gargos with minions. Otherwise play against KXTrauma, he’s always looking for games and his Eagle is solid. I played a 50 match set against him, managed to get 20 wins to his 30. You’ll find ways around Eagle’s offense eventually, just takes a little time to get used to his mobility but if you get on top of him don’t let him go. Take risks to get in, even if he hits you with a few arrows if he can’t follow up on it it’s minimal damage. Eating setup after setup is where he will demolish you. Find ways around his minimal wake up options, every character in the game has a way to beat or stuff them and just rinse repeat. He’s extremely weak to vortex stuff and potential resets from mixup heavy characters. A good Shadow Jago should easily destroy Eagle. All of his setups are basically null against Spinal unless he comes in for a normal. Things like that.
I Really appreciate being called a high level player in this topic, but honestly i’m still far from this level.
The way i see it, Eagle is a Gargos distant cousin.
He can zone, can rushdown, can move quick, has a minion (kind of) and lots of dirty stuff, but pays the price for all that by having the second worst wake up in the game, losing only to this cousin who have a bigger hit/hurt box and no suicidal bird to at least trade with the opponent offense (like eagle do with down PPP
In a way, he is fine, a balanced (but dirty) solid mid who can overwhelm you with his stupid pressure but will struggle against a strong rushdown. Hits like a lion but gets beated like a kitty.
He was a couple of even matchups, some good, some bad, an impossible to win (Arbiter) and a impossible to lose (Hisako)
Hahah TBH I have more trouble fighting Hisako then Arbiter. Although that overshield is a real annoyance, you just have to change the way you pressure him. However with Hisako…one quick knockdown is all you need to be put in the wakeup gauntlet. I’d rather fight Arbiter any day of the week.
Also,
You have no idea how true you are…played against Amenty earlier…looked like I was barely coming out of combo assist. ■■■■, eagle is frustrating to use at times.
But the match it’s very hard. Since Eagle rushdown is projectile based (and possibly the hardest to react in the entire game) Sako can’t count with her parry when put in the blender.
I’m sure Hisako gets bodied by Eagle on wakeup pressure but I feel Hisako probably handles the neutral fine and puts Eagle in equally bad spots when she gets going. So it’s probably an aggressive match but not necessarily bad for her.
Compare this to Aria, which I think is Hisako’s worst match, where I feel Hisako has to deal with the same type of mixups on her wakeup, but Aria has situational DPs to help out on defense, a better backdash, and being able to use projectile-hitbox normals in the neutral (cr MK, jump MK) to frustrate Hisako’s approaches.
Also I can’t really see why Arbiter is so bad for Eagle. He doesn’t have particularly great defense either and I’m struggling to understand why he wins the neutral. Overshield is a thing but he doesn’t have it all that often. I guess bullets are annoying but in my head it doesn’t seem to swing it that much to Arbiter’s favor.
Basically. Eagle’s knockdown projectile pressure isn’t the hardest in the game to deal with (that honor goes to Aria, with Riptor coming in second IMO), and the neutral game is quite manageable. Combine that with generally low damage, and you’ve got a fight where knockdown sucks, but the opponent is 100% free on wakeup. Given the damage disparity, Sako doesn’t have to be right all that often to kill Eagle before he manages to kill her.
And Eagle isn’t as difficult to counter as you might think. He still has to respect the option, in a way that neither Aria nor Riptor really have to. His arrows come at pretty specific times, and before/after that he’s either going to have to push a real button or throw you.