It may not be the exact same as omens but its definitely similar.
New curses may still be competitive options but they aren’t nearly as interesting or threatening in general. I’d much rather it be the old time, old curse abilities and old hit system than the unnecessary rework. However the instinct change and other nerfs are fine. I’d go even further with more vortex nerfs if we just got to keep the old curse system.
The old curses were intentionally nerfed though, they aren’t coming back. The other changes are the more incidental ones, his curses were always going to be going, that much was clear from his backstory. The ability to deny the opponent of vital resources and mechanics (such as instinct mode), greatly extend his instinct’s length and fuel himself whilst stopping the opponent gaining the same fuel was clearly a problem in the dev’s eyes.
I don’t care about the lore. I care about fun and balance. His sucking ability has been a core part of his playstyle since release and it was very non gimmicky/unique, it helped differentiate him as a character. It and his insane vortex were strong which is why he was top 5, he can easily be balanced by simply making the more brainless part of the character (his Seth like vortex) slightly worse.
Basically I care about his unique traits and believe they are intigral to the character.
My point was related to balance. The devs were so keen on the balance change that they wrote backstory for it.
That may be the case but everything is subject to change. Story is one of the least important things when it comes to this game (besides we have seen how many times the story had gone through changes, so it’s an easy one to make.)
Update: I don’t think it matters anyway based on Keits response. Looks like I’m dropping Spinal 
It was just not fair because it was both punishing the opponent and rewarding yourself (that’s why they nerfed the enders as well, the more damage you do, the less advantages you should get). That and the fact that he could basically double his instinct time with the curses which is just insane.
They could have easily reduced the drain speed/time to make it weaker if they wanted but it matters not now.
I have a feeling we will still be able to do some cool stuff with his instinct. You start with 3 skulls and gain double, so right of the bat you can launch 3 skulls in random order, so you could launch low, medium, then overhead (in any order) and if they manage to block all 3 they bounce around and come back, so the other guy not only has to worry about correctly blocking all three skulls (at least 3 times before they vanish) but Spinal can charge in and start his offense while all this is going on, so I am not too worried about it. Add in the fact that you can absorb your own bounced skulls and relaunch them anyway you want …Spinal is gping to pretty damn loony while in Instinct lol
Reducing the drain to even negligible levels wouldn’t have fixed the problem as you cannot activate instinct with anything less than full instinct. He can still stop people from ever being able to use resources, he cannot stop them from using those resources once they have them anymore (which, by the way, is what Omen’s shadow lockouts do).
By the way, I’m a Spinal main and have been since he dropped in s1, I’m not posting arguments because I’m glad he got nerfed, in fact it hurts that he got so nerfed and got so little to compensate.
Seriously, no one else had a net reduction as large as Spinal’s, and I don’t mean in the:
“I’m a Wulf player who got a slight damage nerf and got absolutely nothing in return, except Flipout, Stagger, a dive kick, a faster run and a ground bounce, but they don’t count!”
…sort of way, I mean I actually spent a lot of time poring over the changelists and rewatching the balance changes, and NO ONE got as much of a net reduction as Spinal. That isn’t to say Spinal got nothing, he got some very interesting buffs (he now gets an unbreakable shadow linker and can use this to make slide safe on block (including being very hard to shadow counter) or go into a grounded combo on hit, that is a huge bonus). But he certainly got hit the hardest.
Ill see what people come up with before I serve a final judgement I suppose but the way bass was playing with the changes at the sausey suite made him seem quite a bit worse verses a supposedly nerfed wolf. Of course they had limited time with the changes so that may be the reason.
Of all the characters in the first 2 seasons it will be amongst the hardest for Spinal players to adjust as he has the most to adjust TO. Even the other rework, Maya, has much less to adjust to in terms of a different playstyle as her rework was much less pronounced (lost damage ender, does actual damage). As such Bass had a lot more to adjust to than most. Wulf also is in no way shape or form as bad as a lot of Wulf players are saying now, he may have lost ONE of his totally unreactable 50/50s but it’s not like he doesn’t have a few and didn’t get some really great buffs to compensate, or isn’t the only s1 character to get Recapture, Stagger AND Flipout.
It will, unfortunately, take a while of actually having access to the changes to see how Spinal fares in s3, as the changes to his playstyle will be too broad to get a feel of just through the notes and a few videos. We’ll have to see how he does in March.
Just in time for the first UK Major for KI in April!
I don’t play Spinal, but I feel, given the changes to how his Skulls work, he should get 5 Skulls upon Instinct activation like he did in Season 1. Kinda feels right to me.
Feeling kind of the same on this. Not exactly sure how to feel about the new changes yet.
There is no longer any real reason to stack skulls. I loved stacking skull after skull upon my enemy, quickly devouring all of their resources. But now there’s no point to juggling the enemy with Searing Skulls. What happens if you manage to get five Shadow curses on someone? All they have to do is hit you five times, or just wait thirty seconds. It’s so easy to get a five hit combo in this game.
This just encourages people to play super defensive against Spinal, and run away when they’re cursed. Since the curses no longer affect them until they fight, they just have to wait them out.
I wonder if a Season 3 character will have the ability to absorb enemy resources. Could be the vampire that people are always asking for.
It seems like people’s biggest complaint was his ability to steal instinct with shadow skull, and I would have been cool with them changing that. They could have left regular skulls alone and just made Shadow Skull not do anything and buff its damage, or make it so it slowly drain a tiny bit of health instead.
I feel you though, I love stacking skulls. Tthrowing the opponet in the air and making them eat skulls is so fun lol
I also agree that I would much rather see the instinct sapper nerfed away, but keep the blue skulls the same. It just seems like such a drain on variety and creativity. Spinal’s a pirate, he steals resources. No other character literally steals resources like that. It’s just far more interesting for him to have that ability over the bullet-hell thing that is in instinct only. I wouldn’t mind having a bullet-hell, projectile type of character, but Spinal just doesn’t seem to fit.
This is good for spinal. So now even if he gets combo breaked he can still keep curses on someone (provided he has more then one on).
The power of not letting the opponent build ANY meter is great. That means when they are getting comboed they can’t build nothing. This will make the fulgore MU a little easier on fugbot, but still hamper since how he gains meter. Also renders his instinct rather uselss (worse then it is now) since fulgore can’t build ANY meter now even in instinct.
People are gona be crying for a nerf after this patch comes out for him.
Im actually crying for a buff atm, maybe im still not used to the new curse mechanics idk
Horrible! What made him so great before was the only thing about him worth playing. He didnt have any descent normal attacks, the only real purpose of the skulls was to limit the damage the other character could do, by giving you an advantage. Lets face it, ive seen many fights involving Spinal that were very one sided until he was able to get a skull to even be on par with the rest of the roster. Now, you have to have the upper hand before the opponent to even make the curses viable in a match. The only interesting thing is his instinct…and it doesn’t even last that long. He needs his draining curses back.
From the small amount of season 3 I’ve played and watching Bass play today, Spinal is going to be fine. Although his instinct is shorter the pressure he can put on the opponent is phenomenal. Although he can’t gain meter as easily, when he does he gains access to a +26 hit confirm (which is only -2 on block and virtually impossible to shadow counter) which basically allows him to do whatever he wants including running up to the opponent to continue the combo. Outright denying either meter or instinct for up to 30 seconds is also a very powerful tool which can frustrate your opponent into mistakes, for example if they are just before a bar of meter or instinct.
He’s still very powerful.