Seeing as how he turned out to be one of the characters who were “reworked” I thought it would be interesting for us to discuss all things about the changes he received and what we think about them.
The following notes are from Eventhubs
Reduced Boneshaker Ender damage by ~10%
Jumping HP damage reduced by ~15%
Skull-less Searing Skull now causes a knockdown.
Knockdown duration after Front and Back throws reduced by 16 frames, making vortex setups less straightforward.
Lv4 Searing Skull Ender doesn’t launch as high, preventing any juggle from it.
Skull projectiles in flight are removed from play if Spinal takes a hit.
Skull projectiles deal less chip damage on block.
Curses reworked! Curses no longer steal Shadow/Instinct meter. Instead, they prevent the opponent from gaining Shadow/Instinct meter.
Hitting Spinal removes only the oldest curse, so you need to hit him multiple times to removed stacked curses.
Curses last 30 seconds instead of 5 to 8 seconds.
Shadow Searing Skull doesn’t knockdown, so you can use it mid combo and manual afterward. This allows you to capitalize more on the Instinct Curse’s new function.
Jumping MK (Divekick) inflicts 3 additional frames of blockstun, making it safe if you can get it to hit just before Spinal touches the ground.
New Instinct Mode: Agent of Chaos! Spinal’s Instinct mode has been reworked so that starving Spinal of his resources is a more viable strategy against him. However, this Instinct mode grants Spinal new ways to go absolutely wild. -Activation grants 3 skulls.
-Skulls do not automatically regenerate at all, ever.
-If you build skulls by any means other than Power Devour, you gain double skulls during instinct.
-Skulls fired during instinct don’t disappear on block or walls or floor and bounce left/right or up/down. They are destroyed if:
-They actually hit the opponent
-They bounce off the opponent 3 times
-Spinal gets hit
-Firing a 5th Skull destroys the oldest one.
-Spinal can Power Devour his own Skulls to re-absorb them into his supply.
So anyway, what are your thoughts on Spinal’s Season 3 changes?
Sure. Spinal’s normals are pretty garbage. To make them more safe you use a skull as cover or sacrifice a skull to improve your attack. Well, skull disappear when Spinal is hit. The skull used to make a move safe won’t work because you can simply hit Spinal without consequence.
I understand now, see before you could have been talking about anything, like complaining that the new instinct mode is too good or something, so thanks for clarifying.
Regarding your point there are certainly some setups where you are dead right, such as the overhead skull into slide mixup that Bass often does (as the skull wold previously stop them attempting to punish through fear of getting hit or through making it a blockstring depending on the timing). However remember it’s only searing skull projectiles that get removed, skulls he has collected won’t be, and the majority of the time if you fire a searing skull it will be:
A) in a blockstring where they cannot punish with a normal attack.
B) in a blockstring punishable by a projectile invulnerable move (so no real difference).
C) I neutral when the opponent can avoid it and get a punish
There will definitely be situations where this will hurt, such as when you set up a 50/50 using the overhead skull, as currently if they do a regular invulnerable DP to escape they hit you but then get hit by the skull, so you both get hurt but they get a curse on them. Now you will just get hit (although it is arguable that this is exactly something they wanted to get rid of). However the majority of the time this will make no difference to making your normals better.
On the main topic I will currently refrain from posting my opinions on the changes until I have had time to fully examine the changes for all the characters and what effects they will have to the whole cast, as I don’t want initial shock and hyperbole to colour my opinion (like a lot of Wulf players are doing). However the fact that I have said that should be indicative of how I’m currently feeling about them (although I am not losing my head and saying he is useless now and giving in to the hyperbole).
I understand now, see before you could have been talking about anything, like complaining that the new instinct mode is too good or something, so thanks for clarifying.
Regarding your point there are certainly some setups where you are dead right, such as the overhead skull into slide mixup that Bass often does (as the skull wold previously stop them attempting to punish through fear of getting hit or through making it a blockstring depending on the timing). However remember it’s only searing skull projectiles that get removed, skulls he has collected won’t be, and the majority of the time if you fire a searing skull it will be:
A) in a blockstring where they cannot punish with a normal attack.
B) in a blockstring punishable by a projectile invulnerable move (so no real difference).
C) I neutral when the opponent can avoid it and get a punish
There will definitely be situations where this will hurt, such as when you set up a 50/50 using the overhead skull, as currently if they do a regular invulnerable DP to escape they hit you but then get hit by the skull, so you both get hurt but they get a curse on them. Now you will just get hit (although it is arguable that this is exactly something they wanted to get rid of). However the majority of the time this will make no difference to making your normals better.
I’m still studying the changelists to get a better understanding of them (although I did watch it live and have watched the archive since that) as I want to get a feel for the whole picture before commenting specifically on Spinal’s changes as I don’t want hyperbole and character bias to colour my initial response on the matter.
I guessed he would be getting reworked based on his story (and Maya! Felt pleased about being right on both fronts, good job on the stories!), although I was wrong on how they would rework him.
I can’t believe that they would want to get rid of that move. If you compare Spinal to Glacius it’s not that good. In season 3 Glacius will have 3 hail that he can do the same thing.
Dont know if Im feeling new spinal since he no longer takes away meter and isnt as vortex heavy, good chance of me dropping him if he just doesnt feel good anymore. I feel he will heavily rely on instinct to win which isnt as interesting imo.
I am kind of in the same boat. I probably won’t drop him but I too am a little unsure about the changes to his searing skulls. The new instinct is cool but I honestly would rather him just keep his normal skulls and instinct instead.
Hopefully there will will be some form of a consistent vortex off of throws that will maybe just take a more strict timing to pull off, if not this kind of nerf is very detrimental IMO, he would need some normal buffs to compensate such a loss.
I could live with the vortex/skull nerfsif he still had the suck ability. The lockout of meter is gonna be hard to make matter with his normals :S.
From what I’ve seen this rework was a mistake IMO. They literally just stole thier own idea of locking out meter from omen.z
That’s exactly what I was thinking, now his curses pretty much do the same thing as Omen except instead of preventing you from using it, you can’t gain any. So if your opponent has no meter when the get cursed, it pretty much is Omen’s curse. It is different, but still lol
I agree too, I think all the other nerfs were fine but taking away the meter steal really hurts him IMO. Not only that, but now skulls in play that haven’t hit your opponent go away if Spinal gets hit too.
They did say all things shown are subject to change…but I can’t see them changing his skulls back unless a lot of people speak up.
I’m fine with nerfs to his vortex, I just don’t like how they are destroying a unique mechanic. How is that just someone complaining about nerfs when a huge design change has been made, I feel you may be generalizing my issues.
My argument is simply old curses are a lot more interesting and I’d be willing to take more nerfs in other areas to keep spinals unique mechanic intact.
Preventing from using meter and preventing from gaining meter are not the same thing at all. Plus, everybody seems to forget how much harder it is to get rid of the curses now.
I cannot wait to see all the shenanigans that Bass will come up with. It will still be super scary.
