I think the change to how Lenny interacts with Argus Agony is probably the first time in a while where a beta change was made and the immediate implications of it weren't obvious.
There is, however, a large difference between "Okay, Shadow gets +15f recovery, this makes shadows worse; nerfs Fukua" and "It was necessary to nerf Fukua, because.."
Understanding what a change does, or that something got changed "because Mike doesn't like it" is generally easy, but when there are three weeks of constant "LMFAO if you think Fukua is anywhere near the top", "lol fukua is so easy to beat l2p", "shes just scrubkiller, anyone decent wins free" tbc,
and then she gets punched in the guts with the nerf bat from one day to the next (btw the second time this is happening, post-EVO was the first), this begs the question whether Mike is nerfing a bottom-mid tier character, changed his opinion (because, ..), or these are merely 'readjustments' (ie we will see compensation buffs later)
This also makes commenting on changes difficult - I see what it does on paper, but I don't see what the intent behind it was.
He killed H.Drill - okay, maybe he didn't want Fukua to have a meterless reversal option. Oh, the issue is actually in H.Drill xx Kiss into Oki? Then I can suggest to instead just make Kiss a techable KD and give her the Drill back. But how am I supposed to know this from the patchnotes? If his problem was indeed simply that Fukua shouldn't have a meterless reversal, the suggestion "Hey, how about making Kiss techable instead?" makes no sense whatsoever.
Maybe he thinks a character is way too strong and nerfs some tools, while giving a small compensation buff. Then I find out that this compensation buffs allows /secret tech/ which actually keeps the character on the same spot of the Tierlist. But if Mike doesn't tell us that these are supposed to be nerfs, I will assume said /secret tech/ is intended, and that he simply attempted to redesign the character.
I *absolutely love* how open Mike is in posting possible future changes, accepting input from players, reacting to concerns, etc.
I do however think that he could save us some trouble figuring things out -and himself some headaches- if he posted some short lines on the thought process behind some changes.
If the Filia changes started out with "I think Filia is pretty alright where she currently is powerlevel-wise; but she's a bit too braindead/one-dimensional, because: jHK is a safe-on-block instant overhead that can be AD-cancelled into further crap, deals tons of damage, can crossup, will crossup randomly, and has a hitbox that beats everything - also, Air Gregor is a bit too strong for my taste. So I will attempt to change these two tools while giving her some other stuff to play with, which should keep her roughly as strong as she is", it would become much easier for us to give an accurate assessment whether his changes actually achieve said goal, and people would be less whiny after an initial batch of nerfs, as they'd know their character is going to gain some interesting new stuff in a matter of days.
