So, whats up with all this Shago hate?

Characters Shadow Jago
162

That’s fair, Wulf needs bar for his reversal. But definitely don’t feel guilty about “unloading the clip” and dumping two shadow jumping slash linkers into a combo if you get a lockout. Your expected damage is way higher here, especially vs Shago, than saving your bar for reversals all the time.

By that, I mean, you might get hit a few more times because you don’t have reversal meter, but you will do more damage to Shago with your meter than he will do to you in these cases, so you’ll come out ahead in the long run.

I understand, KI combo theory is actually pretty non-trivial. That’s why a lot of people guess break (“I dunno what the heck is going on”) and why a lot of people do short combos (“I dunno if it’s worth it to do more, so whatever let’s just end the combo now”). That’s why, especially at the low to mid ranks of play in this game, you can get a huge advantage by applying some smart combo knowledge. Like, I’m talking a free 50% per match sort of thing.

Things like learning when to counter break is kind of hard, because combo breaking is closer to a reversal in KI than an actual reversal is sometimes. You know when you hit people with stupid setups in SF a bunch, how they’re more likely to reversal? KI combo breaking is like that. You get people mad at other things in the game, then you throw them a heavy auto-double and counter break it. Because KI is such a fast game (as I’m sure you’ve noticed), the person probably won’t even be able to stop himself from the bait.

But as it applies to the topic at hand, shadow utility is kind of character dependent. Wulf in general benefits really well from using shadows in combos, because shadow jumping slash is fast and highly damaging in combos. You can save them for lockouts even near the end of your KV and still convert otherwise weak combos into huge damage on reaction.

Also as a side note, in S3 they reduced shadow eclipse’s damage as an ender (because you can flip out after it now and keep your offense going). This means if you’re going to spend 2 shadows in a combo, always use them both on shadow jumping slash. Don’t use one for jumping slash and one for shadow ender, it does about 7-8% less damage.

163

This is so important I had to pull it out. People worry about “fundamentals” of the neutral game and then complain about KI’s combo mechanics - but that is a HUGE chunk of the game. You have to consider break ability, damage, meter ramifications for you and your opponent and positioning after the combo. “2-way interaction” isn’t just a catch phrase, you better be thinking hard anytime you are in combo state in KI or you risk leaving a lot on the table. So many times I see people ending a combo right after a lockout and with lots of KV room. Sure it’s simple execution but it’s a lot of decisions. This is why I laugh at people complaining about combo assist. As an aside, my own fighting game epiphany came playing VF5 when I realized that I was losing a lot of close matches - because I was as good or better than my opponents in neutral but I only knew short, sub optimal combos and juggles. You win by maximizing your opportunities.

This is super relevant to Shago because he has a very tricky neutral game, but his overall low damage in the combo game is one of the things that balances this out.

164

Tbh that happens on all levels. It may be rather difficult to confirm lockout into more damage when you intended to go for short combo. And since KI can be somewhat forgiving when it comes to “conservative confirms”, well…

1 Like
165

I don"t know if that link has been posted yet or not, so I post it here:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4s6vLSCwwrQ

So, what did I learn if I want to avoid Shago’s vortex? Stay in the corner :smiley:

3 Likes
166

The character itself is not big deal, I just hate his gimmicks. And the same Storm said: it’s not a funny match. I’m tired of the grab gimmicks. Fighting good Jagos is hard but chasing a Shadow Jago is really boring. Also his manuals seems really easy to perfom, you don’t have to be a really skilled player to use him.
The video above is good but I wouldn’t reccomend staying in the corner. When talking about that teleport kick the reach has a lot to do. I used to react pretty well to his double slide kick and stop it before the second hit with just a button, but now it seems I’m slower on my reactions and can’t get it with ease as before =(

1 Like
167

Shago comes off to me as the go-to character people pick after they lose a round or two. Every single time this happens. Here comes the Shago Flowchart - I win a round, rematch, I win again, they choose select character (hoo boy, they’re gonna pick shadow jago I bet), shago is picked (just like the past ten times, gee…), I lose, oh well, followed up with an unending stream of 3EDGY5ME teabags, followed by a quick run to the main menu. I used to get rage mail if I was lucky, but I’ve since turned that off because it’s not funny anymore. He contributes to the game not being fun to play online. :confused:

tl;dr I think Shago sucks, but it’s not because I think he’s broken, but mostly because EVERYONE PLAYS HIM FOREVER. Yuck. :frowning: :frowning: :frowning:

1 Like
168

Yeah… I think that’s because, like I said earlier, he’s the character for people who don’t want to play KI. He’s a roll of the dice. He’s a 50/50 that results in him dead or you dead.

I actually have a lot less of an issue with him, and I think people are catching on that he is ■■■■ because I’m seeing him a lot less (he seems overrepresented in bronze/silver and underrepresented in gold/killer). I just turtle up and let him hang himself. He will eventually do something stupid, and you’ll put an easy 30% on him.

Also, it must be a god ■■■■ compulsion, but Shagos seem to universally want to “do something” regardless of oki pressure or frame data. I honestly can’t remember the last Shago that actually blocked on wake-up. So you just need to find out if they are the “jab out of pressure” type or the “dp” type and act accordingly.

2 Likes
169

In my opinion, I think it’s his runaway game coupled with lag. In some matchups like thunder or tusk for example, you have to inch your way in and deal with shagos runaway tactics. Now throw in some lag (most high ranked players are laggy for some “reason”) and you have a recipe for frustration. You made your way in, made all the right reads opened him up and bam a lag spike hits, you get locked out and the chase begins all over again or they guess break you and run away.

It’s part of the reason why online randoms hate tusk as well, lagspike lockouts for 60% plus damage. The game has become more matchup based in season 3, theres really bad matchups in the game now, whereas before the worst you’d probably see is 4-6. Theres alot of cool theory stuff but it doesn’t seem to be working out this time around, not even the combo system is enough to balance out some of the changes they’ve made to characters. I suspect a few characters will see some major balancing changes this season. Ki’s frankenstein mix and mash system is really cool and appealing but I think the experiment has gone too far at this point, I don’t think this game will appeal to the mainstream anymore, it is definitely ultra niche now.

170

I agree…ALOT of seriously lopsided matchups…See counter picking going on all the time. Very effective too. Very annoying.

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Just out of curiousity, what are these brand new lopsided MU’s that just didn’t exist in S2? S3 has only added 5 characters so far - there aren’t all that many new MU’s to go around in the first place, and the changes for the existing fights aren’t really all that different in my estimation.

Genuinely curious.

172

A lot of people complained about the Thunder v Shago MU in S2.

And with the exception of Rash (for the most part) the S3 characters all have glaring weaknesses.

173

You know, I’ve been noticing that more and more lately…it’s been bugging the crap out of me too. Maybe because of all the PC players…I dunno, but it seems like lag is becoming a bigger issue than it has previously.

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174

I play kan ra, his bad mus all got worse. Also, some characters play fundamentally different now, the balance changes did affect mus with existing characters and their approach. Its a different game now.

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I’m new to the game from the PC launch. As I matured with the game, I really do not have that much trouble with Shago. Granted, I play as Jago, which means my normals and defense are pretty good. I guess just patience is the key. By the time the Shago player is spamming fireballs, I have him panicked and can get close enough for a Shadow Wind Kick. Even if he can start more combos, my damage output is a bit higher.

I’ve been wrecked by more Hisako and Glacius player than others though, so maybe Shago would be a good second when I have to fight them.

176

Dunno about Glacius, but Shago isn’t a particularly hard fight for Hisako. She doesn’t care about cross up shenanigans - if Shago disappears she can just counter and be done with it. If you want to counterpick her, you’ll want someone with a few projectile normals or something. Riptor is her classically bad MU.

@Chris4387 I think the fact that you play Kan has probably skewed your take a bit. He really is worse than he was in S2, and while I think most of his changes were pretty necessary, I’d agree that his bad fights all got a bit worse. I think that’s skewing your perspective a bit though - no one else besides Maya and perhaps Spinal really got all that many changes to their core game plans. Different characters got a couple of different tweaks and options for how they approach, pressure or run defense, but the general thrust of their games has largely remained the same.

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I’d be curious what about PC players makes the lag worse? That we are most likely on ethernet instead of wifi? That we likely have more powerful rigs than most console?

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It’s because he’s basically a DBZ Character that flies all over the screen and incredibly easy to play. You could lose to a scrub playing this character because you can’t react to random teleports that hit left or right and stuff. He’s beatable, but just very annoying to deal with hence all the hate.. And you obviously never fought a good Kan Ra if you think he’s the worst btw lol.

1 Like
179

A wired connection will generally be more stable than a wifi one. I haven’t personally noted any more lag in S3 - will run into the occasional bad connection, but for the most part my matches have been as smooth as ever.

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I know. I was being a bit snarky. PC players get blamed for all the lag in both of the cross-platform games I play (this and SFV). It is getting annoying considering that in my limited experience, PC players generally have better machines and better connections (most desktops plugin while many (most?) consoles run wifi).

SFV players at least had some cause for complaint since PC players were essentially able to choose who got the bulk of the teleporting by alt-tabbing. The PCs themselves were still not responsible for the lag.

Being entirely honest, it is a possibility that some issue with cross-platform is causing the lag… but I think that’s a long shot at best, and some “probably not a tech guy” forum poster is certainly not going to be the magic bullet that figures that out.

For my own experience, KI has been almost perfect. I have had a handful of laggy matches including a few that were fully unplayable, but they make up probably less than 1% of all of my matches.

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181

I wasn’t blaming anybody, just offering a suggestion as to maybe why. The PC port of KI is new. It’s likely not all of the bugs are worked out, and I’d just about guarantee there are more PC players out there than not trying to run the game on PCs that are either under-powered or just barely squeaking by when it comes to performance.

Bottom line, I was mostly saying I’ve been noticing more lag on online matches lately, whatever the reason.