The State of the Spider Queen

For the last few weeks several Tier lists have dropped on this message board. Much to my surprise and not surprise, Sadira has fallen from her lofty heights. While tiers aren’t facts, (and Geek if you hijack this thread about your dislike of tiers… so help me… Sadira + Aganos = rubble), but opinions can reveal what people think of a specific character.

For the last several weeks I’ve Sadira seen sink lower and lower on the tier lists. Whether people want to agree with them or not doesn’t matter to me, because I’ve certainly noticed a huge difference with her in S3 versus S2.

During S2 I was always in around the top 150 to 200 on the leader boards. In S3, I’m lucky to beat 950. While I still can carry a 60% win rate, every match is much harder. Part of this is her dramatic damage nerf. I don’t know about other characters, but the damage nerf is hurting Sadira. While I don’t think she’s trash. I have to do a LOT more to get the win. While she may hit slightly harder than Cinder, Cinder does have ways to boost his damage output in huge ways.

Sadly, Sadira does not.

While her mobility has always been her greatest advantage, several new characters have tons of tools to take her out of the air and get in on her.

As a Sadira main, I will probably remain loyal to my Spider Queen until KI dies, but honestly I would love to devs to give her some TLC and give her some tools to help compete a bit more.

Is she still viable… Yes, but when you consider how difficult it is to master her techniques, I think most new players will forsake her completely for somebody (like Cinder/ Shago/ Gargos) that is a bit more rewarding.

What I’d love to see is attacks that can envenom players. (attacks that do “DOT” damage). Just as a thought.

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shrug I think she’s pretty fun. And I net wins with her pretty easily, online at least.

Really the only reason I don’t play her is because she has no personality whatsoever and her design isn’t really my style.

What I would personally do is find a way to make her juggles more rewarding, maybe by making some of her air normals more damaging or giving more meter gain to them. Even with shadow cashouts, there’s really not much reason to take full advantage of them other than the fun factor.

Oh, I can still win, and I can still win with style, but there are some serious match ups that are near impossible for her to get an edge. Bad match ups are bad match ups, but for Sadira its like there is an entire legion of characters designed to just wreck her.

,
Well lemme think…

The characters I know do well against Sadira are Thunder, Cinder, Rash, Shago, maybe Raam, Gargos (when you’re far away) and Eyedol.

I wouldn’t call that a legion.

Glacius (if actually played correctly) is very effective and keeping her at bay.

Same situation as Gargos, get in and you can easily take the life bar.

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I would add Tusk for sure, and I have doubts, but maybe Omen and Aria

Tusk and Omen? Not really, Sadira can easily stay above all their options with correct spacing.

Strange as it may sound, I actually think Sadira does just fine against Cinder, and Shago certainly isn’t that much of a threat to her in my opinion. Demon blade is active for forever and safe on block, so you can use it to blow up fireflash, or just use specific widow’s bite setups to stuff it.

On the broader question of Sadira’s tier placement (and related, how good she is), I think there’s a few points to make. The first is that yes, the damage nerf really affected her, and she isn’t as good as she used to be as a result. The second point is that no, she really doesn’t lose very many fights either, and I personally think people are underrating her. Sadira definitely has to get in more, but does Sadira really have an issue getting in or opening people up? At high level it can definitely be more difficult to open someone up, but at base Sadira is still really hard to defend against and tends to get openings. And if you get broken you’re just back to neutral where, lest we forget, Sadira does really freaking well. She still avoids a lot of the options of most of the cast in neutral, and that isn’t an insignificant advantage.

So long story short - yes Sadira is worse, no she isn’t that much worse. Having to open up the opponent a few extra times per match isn’t the end of the world, and she handles neutral decently well in the vast majority of her MU’s. I’m not in favor of giving her any new tools to “cope” or “compete”. To be honest I think that’s where a lot of her issues came from in the first place, and I’m still salty about all of you who complained so much that she “needed” a dedicated damage ender and extra juggles and crap. She didn’t “need” them, and now that she has them (and the accompanying nerfs to go along with the extra utility) people are still complaining. She had a very elegant moveset with shared utilities that worked very well, and then people mucked it all up crying for extra stuff that was already incorporated into her toolset. :unamused:

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:open_mouth:

Well, I never asked for a damage ender. I hate this one. I hate the fact that I have to do extra steps just to do her regular recluse linkers.

My problem is this while the entire S2 cast received their fair share of nerfs, their buffs vastly outshined them. A great example is Thunder. His buffs have made him a beast. He was always good, mind you, but now he’s even better. This is true for much of the cast, BUT Sadira. I think the only character to come close to her is Sabrewulf.

Sadira was a much more solid character in S2 and her “buffs” haven’t justified her nerfs (other than bug fixes). So in that regards, I do agree with you Storm. I don’t think she needed more. If anything, they could have simply fixed Shadow Web Cling or changed it to be much more useful.

For me, I don’t really want more tools but a refinement of what she has. In terms of her damage ender, I would either remove it OR allow it to do much more damage. Make it worth using. As the damage ender does a hard knock down, I would change the Recluse Ender back to a juggle ender. The only other thing I would tweak is allowing successful instinct web hits to generate more potential damage. This would encourage Sadira mains to use them correctly in combos to maximize damage.

I was just bored, so I figured I’d just do a quick test for some numbers comparing enders.

My combo to test this is:

Heavy Blade Demon > Heavy AD > Light Blade Demon > Heavy AD > Ender

This is a minimum Level 4 Ender comparison.

Blade Demon Ender = 32% and allows for juggles.

Recluse Ender = 36% exchange and hard knockdown

Web Cling Ender = 39% damage and hard knockdown

I did the same thing with Riptor and Jago. Again minimum Level 4 Enders.

Tail Flip Ender = 35% Hard knockdown

Talon Rake Ender = 41% straight damage, no other benefits

Jago:

Endokuken Ender = 29% get’s meter

Tiger Fury = 42% damage only

Seems to me, just using my main and the poster boy, the reason her Damage Ender is less is because she gets a setup off of it. You get 44 frames of whatever you want after Sadira’s Damage Ender. Jago get 26 frames after his, and Riptor gets 4 frames. I’d trade 2% damage as Riptor to have a Hard Knockdown with my damage ender in a heart beat.

Edit: To add onto this, since Jago’s Medium Wind Kick has a startup of 11 frames and is active for 10 frames, you can meaty the person if they have no invincible reversal or meter, if you just delay 6-16 frames. And since it’s only -3 on block you can do DP to punish them for trying to punish your “Yolo” Wind Kick. Just a random thought.

Edit2 (actually on topic): It’s also pretty easy to increase the damage off Blade Demon ender with follow-ups to over 40% with the cost of 1 or 2 meter(s).

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Figured I’d throw in my 2 cents.

I know Sadira. I know all her frame data, mixups, setups, combos, and play her at high level.

Season 3 Sadira is, I think, Mid tier.

Her damage output is lower, but that’s really one of the only things that changed. You still play her the same way. I do agree she has some bad match ups (wulf, thunder, omen, Aganos (you heard me), raam, and eyedol ( in his current state)) the rest of the cast are pretty even, or are matches Sadira wins.

Her air mobility is honestly underused. Most people try to yolo with web cling->MWB and get blown up. But really just jumping and using LWB is really good. I even feel like this is how I open up a ton of people. Against Jago I usually jump forwards->jump back just to see what people will do. Plus you can throw LWB to make your decent ( still in neutral ) safe from wind kicks and fireballs. Eventually you condition your opponent and you can just jump forwards and get a jump in.

Sadira’s HP is also never talked about.

It’s. -2 on block ( which at max range is really good), it has a great hit box, and it comes our relatively fast. The neat thing is on counter hit you are positive enough to hit confirm into EX blade demon for a full combo. That means you can throw out this poke and if it counter hits you get a full combo. That’s pretty rediculous.

If you meaty Widows drop (dive kick) really close to the ground, you’re insanely positive. Other wise using it in the air is crazy hard to defend against.

On paper Sadira is pretty good, but all the stuff that makes her good is crazy high level, which is why I think people say she’s bottom tier. Even Greif doesn’t do half the ■■■■ that makes Sadira really good, probably because it crazy hard. Like hit confirming Counter hit mp->mp (which I think is a 1 frame link) or using her shuffle game.

Her damage isn’t great, but that’s about it. She’s an insane and stylish character. Oh and btw. If you launch your opponent and cash out the damage with ex recluse, I think it does more damage than grounded recluse. Or maybe air combos are more damaging in general? The point is, her target combo is sick now.

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Last Time I checked, the web cling ender was not a hard knockdown. I may need to test again and see if anything has changed since the last patch.

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No need. It’s definitely not a hard knockdown - the opponent is free to quick rise it.

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I set the opponent to Quick Rise and it didn’t change how long they were down. Must be a problem with the Quick Rise option then. I’ll redo my test a little later.

Yeah, I feel like the option is wonky sometimes. I’d say just record Sadira hitting you with the ender, and compare the wakeup timings between when you try to quick rise and not.

Yeah, that’s what I had in mind. I just did the previous test when I was tired. I blame my brain for that.

Also, past me is a doo-doo face.

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks her damage REALLY sucks now. :slight_smile:

That being said, his Instinct Combo is crazy amazing.

Hah! Tusk be like, “ok missy you had your fun”.

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