Sabrewulf Season 3 Rebalance Thread

Wow. This thread completely died. That’s kinda sad. I was enjoying the conversation about Sabrewulf 3.0.

I wondering the devs had the time to take any feedback about the rebalances in to account and make any changes.

I’m still hoping that they’ll add something a bit more fun to Sabrewulf’s instinct, but I’m 99.99999% certain that’s not in the cards and ya know, it is what it is.

But just in general, I’m curious if there was a sort of “data collection” on the site and a subsequent conversation among the devs to see if there might be some alterations based on feedback prior to release, or if they’re waiting until people get the third season in their hands for more informed feedback.

I guess we’ve reached the point where everyone has calmed down and decided to figure it out when the game releases.
That, or we’ve been way too distracted by news and teasers and character reveals.

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Probably a bit of both.

Personally I’m still not a big fan of the wulf changes and he will see less play from me, I’ll give him a shot though. Juggles look fun. It’s about time I change up mains anyway.

I am excited to hopefully make Kim Wu or Arbiter my new main in his place, whichever fits my style more. My secondary, Hisako, is looking much nicer though.

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Interesting. Most of us Hisako mains aren’t too thrilled about her S3 changes. What are you looking forward to with her in S3?

The nerfs for the most part seem fair to me, not really that different. Air On Ryo Zan changes seem like the worst one to me. What am I most looking forward to? I am really digging that Descent Cancel and stagger on counter hits. I see cool tech in the future.

So, while I’ve come to terms with the Wulf rebalance (I know that even without instinct he hit like a truck, now I look forward to dive slash and improved run/hamstring) I had an idea that could be fun to entertain.
What if, during instinct, Wulf had the ability to temporarily regain his damage buff at the cost of his health?
I made a thread, but I’m not sure if it will wind up merged or not, so here’s a link.

Just as an experiment I pitted CPU vs. CPU KYLE difficulty, Saberwulf versus anybody else. Saberwulf will win 9 times out of 10 versus literally anybody. Kyle CPU can’t even beat its own Wulf.
Too much frame advantage. Way too much damage.

He needs to be brought down a notch for balance sake.

Since the regular CPU violates various implicit game mechanics (e.g. knowledge of an event cannot be acted on by a player until at least 15 frames have passed) around which moves are balanced, CPU vs CPU matches are beyond irrelevant.

You missed my point… Unless you actually believe that excessive frame advantage and damage are irrelevant.

It would appear IG has made the same observation I did since most of the Wulf nerfs pertain to frames and damage.

I believe you backed up your opinion with garbage evidence. If you want to convince people that Wulf’s frame advantage and damage are egregious, then you’ll need to back it up with better evidence. (Or, alternatively, explain why CPU vs CPU matches are still relevant despite the issue I pointed out.)

ftr, the Wulf rebalance doesn’t list even one nerf to frame advantage on a move.

Not a single IG nerf to Wulf touched his frame advantage. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

And a simulated CPU match is a very bad reason to nerf a character.

The jumping slash nerf and the dash through eclipse nerf both pertain to frames. Which is what @Archon879 was referring to I believe.

Wulf doesn’t need his normals nerfed. He needs them. But I agree that his nerfs are justified.

Perhaps. Just to be precise however, while those are nerfs to frame data, frame advantage is typically a specific phrase that denotes how plus or minus you are after certain actions. If cr+LK were no longer +4 on block that would be a nerf to frame advantage.

But yeah, no balance changes ever in the history of anything should be based on how CPU Kyle performs. Kyle is a cheat AI essentially, and has little to no bearing on how actual high level KI is played. Archon’s point is correct (Wulf has too much damage, frame advantage in instinct through rampant FC’s), but his supporting evidence isn’t really why the point is correct. The specific nerf to the feral cancel refresh rate also isn’t really an nerf to Wulf’s frame advantage on anything - it’s really just a limiter on how often he gets to use those plus frames to do craziness.

im pretty sure his heavy wind kick…goes full screen…but the shadow version has been nerfed so t wont be full screen

I got that confused. Thnx

So after watching Tusk’s gameplay breakdown, he gets a run move that low profiles projectiles and goes into a low or overhead and an instinct that automatically cancels any special into any special on the ground or in the air, along with combos that deal 75% damage.

Meanwhile, Wulf gets a manually input instinct cancel only for grounded moves with a cooldown and overall damage nerf in instinct and in general.

I realize the overall movesets differ greatly, but as a Wulf main, this still seems a little unfair and makes the nerfs look even more like overkill. I really hope the new options with Wulf will make up for this but I will have to completely relearn how I use him. (Maybe not necessarily a bad thing).

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Wulf has quick buttons, once you block an attack from tusk, its a punish opportunity for Wulf. Its a different game now, with the new mechanics and balance changes, of course we have to re-learn how to play the characters. Makes it more exciting, and they’re definitely not against adding some nerfs if he’s too OP, I feel like his damage may be reduced somewhere down the line.

It’s just wrong to compare these features out of context. Wulf and Tusk are not fighting over an Instinct feature. There is a very clear difference between how Tusk is going to play and how Wulf plays, and the uses for the two cancels. The nerfs were not generic - because cancelling moves is in principle too powerful. The nerfs were specific - Sabrewulf’s feral cancel is too powerful.

No one ever likes their character to lose anything. I get that. But we need to actually wait to see these things in action before we get too nuts about it. The streams demonstrating the characters abilities (against static practice dummies or players hashing around (with all due respect to the IG guys on stream) will always make characters look OP. But I am very confident that Tusk has not gained what Sabrewulf used to have. By a longshot.

Pretty much this. Feral cancel is a cancel out of any action, on hit, whiff, start-up, whatever. Tusk can cancel specials into specials similarly to what Fulgore can do with pips. They are both strong and interesting traits, but beyond having the word “cancel” in them they are pretty different.

Also note well just how fast Wulf is relative to Tusk. Tusk might be able to cancel specials into other specials, but from the looks of things Tusk’s specials are pretty darn slow to begin with. Even with his deflect window, I get the distinct feeling that putting buttons out in front of him on start-up is going to be a thing.

I totally agree, the traits are unique to each character especially within the context of their own moveset relative to others. I should specify that really my biggest concern with wulf is that they felt the need to take away his extra damage in instinct. On a personal level, this hurts because I admittedly suck at feral cancels (working on it). For the game balance as a whole, it was my understanding that he was nerfed because the devs though he did too much damage for the type of rushdown character he is. Yet now we have a character who does massive damage and becomes a huge rushdown berserker type during instinct.

tl;dr: Still salty about Wulfs instinct, excited to see how it all works out in season 3.