Very excited to see how these changes feel, I've never been Hatred Install's strongest soldier but it will still be sad to see even more damage slip from my beloved Lenny > HI DHC (hit on two fronts by the lenny damage nerfs, mind you!)She's gotten some straight up buffs (in addition to QoL) to a bunch of things that I think will really move the needle in terms of consistency effectiveness as a point character. I did nerf install DHC damage and recovery, but it lasts a bit longer when used on point now. Clouds post came in after I wrote this, but many things listed there in his post have been implemented already.
Really hoping you do get a chance to come back around to looking at Hatred Guard. My biggest gripe with it is that it always feels like an invisible mechanic, on top of it being underwhelming and difficult to create value out of. Hatred Guard in its current state felt the most directly involved against slow, large assists that could be safely armored, like H brass countercalls, annie DP while flying high in the air, or projectiles like parasoul tear. In these situations Painwheel is presented with the decision making opportunity of cashing out onto the assist to dissuade future calls, or continue to store damage in hopes of a massive hit to the point (or point + assist characters.) Its a fun risk reward system that develops through longer sets and flowcharts differently through team compositions and certain assists; I armor through an equal amount of beat extend and H brass assist calls, but I'm much more prone to immediately cash out stored damage on beat extend both because I am likely closer to the opposing point character and can fish for a hit on both, and I personally want to dissuade beat extend calls through bleeding assists more than I do H brass calls.
This suggestion from Softie is something I would really like to see at least toyed with internally like nail storage, it seems a bit strong but also like something that intertwines with where HI is moving and where I think HG should me moving (I would also really like to slingshot myself across the screen with this because that sounds like an immediate dopamine generator).
I can understand why'd you'd want to implement health drain back to avoid having a clone always held in neutral but in their current state clones are not strong enough to warrant a drawback like this. They are absolutely the most interactable setplay in the game and incentivizing the opponent to just ignore it all together is not the method. I can't even use it offensively if they decide to avoid it since the range on clones is smaller than you would think. Unless clones get some sort of compensation buff which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere this just seems limiting for no real reason. I personally think the health drain should just go altogether but if its destined to stay can we get something to buff clones? I've mentioned it in the past but slightly better scaling and allowing clones to stay if fukua blocks a projectile/assist would allow her to better use clones in nuetral in more mu's and force a little more interaction on the opponents end. Assists should still be able to hit a clone a motion so once you pin her down with something she still cant really use the clone defensively like a discount item drop. This post is probably a little too late for anything to change on fukua for the upcoming beta patch, but I figured I'd post something anyway. Also any word on any other fukua changes? I know throw hkd was mentioned a while back but I haven't seen anything about it since so I'm curious if there's anything else in the back.FUKUA
Next update brings back health drain on shadows, but:
• She restores life spent on that shadow when it hits a character
• Immediate healing sources for shadow drain health (Lv3, armored cmd grab, taunt) are increased.
• Fireballs restore lost life from shadow drain when they return on successful hit.
More avenues to go in and get life back if you're hitting with them, or land cmd grab / Lv3, but holding L Shadow with 99% up time will start to hurt eventually. Doing combos and making a comeback with holding shadows won't hurt her unless you bank on a held shadow reset and it doesn't work out.
I second this actually. Being able to keep better track of your opponents resources during a set would be huge QOL imoI was able to make a post about wanting a three-bar Hype meter for Beowulf before that happened, but I was told that it can cause visual clutter as I learned about it, so instead, a UI element that can track Squigly's stances and charged state, Valentine's equipped vials and Beowulf's Hype level would be nice.
I think everyone agrees that the l bang into teleport stuff was too potent because of the 50/50 into killing two characters, but is there a way to make assists immune to lenny while/after recovering? This would effectively kill the strong reset point with lenny against assists but doesn't cause wonky interactions with assists as described above.
Because that's how she was designed.
Late but I'm generally supporting these changes! Especially giving Umby very weak but at least usable bubbles in Ravenous -- no bubbles has felt really harsh and made Ravenous feel weak!UMBRELLA
I don't think [giving her weak bubbles in Ravenous is] a bad suggestion. I will mess around with it.
We could try bringing back Hunger Meter drain on P normals so that combos speed up towards Ravenous to make that waiting period even shorter, etc. Making sure Satiated has reasonable paths towards Ravenous and Overstuffed is okay, and while it won't be anywhere near as fast and as extreme as old Bobblin' loops, if it needs adjustments that's cool with me, I don't mind either way as long as there's an intentional lock out before you're hitting Ravenous again, hence not being able to Salt Grinder for 1 chew in Ravenous to stay in Ravenous indefinitely.
The mode needs a bit of tuning and the damage is out of control, we're on the same page there. I think it's expected that this version of Umbrella does end up in Overstuffed more often than Ravenous because that's the state she can go to whenever, but I don't think that's a bad thing. If Ravenous is still happening after periods of neutral, or waiting, or intentional taunting, then she's eventually going to enter a state where she becomes very scary and rushes you down for a hit with some extremely powerful tools, which I think is cool!
One thing I'm eyeing here is her ability to leave Overstuffed mid combo by using bubbles. I think it would be more committal to remove that and have her forced to play in Overstuffed for a bit and let it drain out. That way if you go to Overstuffed to cash out on big damage, but the resets and neutral you play with are more committal instead of dropping back down to Satiated for SQRT and other similar things in the same combo you got to Overstuffed.
H Reload:
This is really interesting. With H Reload now on 2/4 i theorize she still wont have the assist+reload > setup which you've clearly stated she was not designed to do. So no buffs for the H Train-like Teams. But rather this is actually a buff for the H Brass teams. This is a reload meant for Neutral! You want to reload and use that first normal for pressure as you come up with a plan based on your next 2 bullets!
With a space in between bullets you will never get Ice>Fire setups sadly, tho no other bullet combination is appealing one after the other in combos anyways.
This is straight up buffing Neutral making it a bit more fast paced since us players are now entinced to shoot bullets more often than before and reload after the 4th instead of 3rd/6th. It also fixes a problem H reload had where you couldnt really use the last bullet without now being bulletless and risking it till you reload again. So overall H reload as it is i think it will be great but fair. Seeing bullets more often also unironically balances them. The problem with Laser/Rail most people have with it is that you never use it cause you never use Last Call to load it, and we were barely getting it on Meterless reloads since most people only use the 3rd bullet and reload or die before the 6th, getting to use special bullets more often disipates that disparity and doesnt make railgun look bad in comparison!
M Reload:
This one however feels a bit random. TO BE FAIR, i dont know what you guys could do with M reload to make it... at least usable? We straight up dont need a 3rd type of reload! You either WANT special bullets or you DONT. So either H or L reload. I honestly have no idea what purpose could M have to be appealing to use but i dont think putting a single special bullet on 5th will make me ever use it... not that it needs to be a usable move but honestly, im not reloading with M if im only getting a special on 5th, id much rather L Reload if i wanted +3 normal bullets upfront.
Thanks for looking up for our favorite grandma Liam! The H reload experiment seems like it'll be awesome!
omg im stupid hahahaha
i thought H was 2nd/4th and M 5th for not looking at the character icon smh.
Personally I'm fine with this as long as the health gain back is actually significant enough that helps her gameplan compared to old health gain. The rest of the changes that would be nice for fukua is letting fukua spend a bar to convert from airthrow and the ground throw hkd buff. Consistent m shadow pickups on all of the cast and shadow clones refresh when fukua gets dhc'd in through bff or lvl 3 after the clones have been used as an assist earlier would be nice. If these changes get implemented then fukua would be solid.FUKUA
Next update brings back health drain on shadows, but:
• She restores life spent on that shadow when it hits a character
• Immediate healing sources for shadow drain health (Lv3, armored cmd grab, taunt) are increased.
• Fireballs restore lost life from shadow drain when they return on successful hit.
I will release the next patch tomorrow morning at some point when I wake up so that I'm around and awake to make a hotfix if needed.
her standing medium kickI know its unlikely but is there any chance Squigly players could maybe play around with some sort of adjustment to 5MK during this patch cycle? I've seen it thrown around time and time again in the maincord how the move feels so inconsistent with launching on air hit only and would be better off either without or as a mini launcher vs grounded opponents. Just curious if it's within the realm of possibilities or just a pipe dream.
If you are hearing him, he is saying that the core design functionality is not going to change; that means it is not going to change to what specifically you want. The answer isn't going to change, so continuing to ask for reworks is fruitless.Crossed my mind believe it or not and I hear you.
But I really think taking a look at M & H reloads being more deliberate rather than what we have now is reasonable. I like the idea of working with random bullets. Just in a more controlled way & think that's what most posts about it say in a nutshell give or take different ideas.
Destroying the previous or first bullet to load a special one would be a sacrifice I wouldn't mind, but the current design's clear. I'm leaning on how M & H reloads feel. Dahlia's been fun, I think theres room for more too.
Both of these leading to call Excella / A-Train / Salt Grinder + load your resource up for an optimal gameplan I think is less than desirable and not my cup of tea personally. Knowing what we know now, I don't think Hype would exist as it does today, and Valentine's vials would probably be different too.
Totally agreed though, if Dahlia could pick her ammo, it probably would not make her top 1 and destroy the game - but alas that's just not what we went with.
I never really posted much about why Dahlia is the way she is like this, so I don't mind providing a little extra context in this case FWIW and I'm happy to have the conversation, even if we're not having it for the purposes of actually changing her at this time. I don't have any more to say about Dahlia's reload for now though!
Keeping track of this is absolute peak silly Skullgirls jank and jargon. It feels really awkward to me but I thought that was kind of one of those "never change this" things, so that a player who DOES pay attention to that can know when their incoming is safe against Timpani or Thresher, or other air options. Not sure how I feel about removing the opportunity for this crazy knowledge check, even if it does feel like a "bug" for the defender when their stuff doesn't work.
I want to preface this by saying I am not attending Combo Breaker this year, but I am a bit concerned for you and the team if you choose to release a console patch prior to Combo Breaker. I am guessing based on the responses lately that the resources allocated towards both developing the patch as well as bug testing and console testing the patch is severely limited compared to years prior.RELEASE TIMELINE
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• A quick turnaround on a patch for Steam and PS4 is possible before Combo Breaker (that's over a month away) if we'd like to play on a theoretical new patch that is prepared around May 1st, and releases sometime later in May.
• If that's too soon, we could potentially delay the patch until after CB + SGCS is wrapped up, so releasing sometime like June 1st, but there will likely be no additional balance changes during the month of May - we'd just be waiting.
• We could maaaaayyybbeee also spot fix some egregious things for CB + SGCS finals, like just shipping Annie install changes and leaving everything else more or less alone. The feasibility of this though I'd need to check with the rest of the team on, I would really prefer to just delay it or ship it before CB.
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Maybe consider reverting Umbrella's overstuffed rush change? The bounce it gave was a game changer for overstuffed routing.3.7.5 is live, update notes are appended to the top of the old one:
Skullgirls 2nd Encore - (Valentine Cross Update!) Beta Mode Update [4/25/2024] - Steam News
Balance changes, Valentine's new cross redesign, and fixes for an ancient defect with character lighting!store.steampowered.com