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Dahlia ice is the most obvious thing that needs to be reworked. But I think it is important not to just remove armor break and call it good. Imo armor break should transfer to a different projectile (maybe railgun as that would be the most balanced and make it more desirable to use).
As for her other ammo choices:
As it stands now: Normal shot: it's the normal shot. Drops on 2 character hits. Good all round tool Shotgun: opponent move, damage, good mix tool Railgun: long range poke, knockdown Fire: double touch (on hit), ok mix tool but there are much better choices with the other shots. Ice: opponent hold, armor break, multi hit, space control (obviously the best to load at the moment) Lightning: space control, short opponent hold, multi hit, good mix tool
The only other change I think is necessary is the 2nd hit of fire -> don't disappear on hit. That way it would be more useful for trades and setups. (it is pretty useless now except for a few unique situations).
Nitpicks:
lightning and ice are still very similar, only differentiated by the longer hold time of ice and the air hold and non arch ability of lightning. This is ok but it would be nice if they were a bit more unique. They are both multi-hitting and used as space control and opponent hold. Ice being better for hold and lightning being better for space control because of its slow moving nature and non-arch. So maybe remove the multi hit from ice and give it something else like when it hits the ground it makes a small barrier, maybe 2 ice shots makes the barrier bigger-- something like that that makes it truly stand on its own. Lightning could wall bounce off the ground and celling traveling in a straight line. it would be interesting to play around witch such ideas in alpha/beta. It also would be nice if normal shot didn't drop on two characters.
With the changes I mentioned: Normal shot: it's the normal shot.-- (added doesn't drop with 2 characters) Shotgun: opponent move, damage Railgun: long range poke, knockdown, armor break --(added armor break) Fire: double touch (on hit), after first hit projectile doesn't disappear on player hit. -- (added after first hit projectile doesn't disappear on player hit) Ice: opponent hold, ice wall -- (removed multi-hit, removed armor break, added "ice wall") Lightning: space control, wall, ground celling bounce, short opponent hold, multi hit-- (added ground, celling bounce)
This seems a bit more balanced keeping every shot unique and useful with no shot being outstanding compared to the others. Lightning may be a bit more favorable but that could be balanced with damage reduction, and to be fair I don't know if ice-wall is a good idea or not but I think ice would need something else if armor break and multi-hit are removed.
(I still think there should be a way to choose shots with normal reload as discussed in the dahlia beta thread) -- I honestly never use mp/hp reload as it only leads to problems with combos-- instead I just use last call mid combo and mix.
Makes sense. Liked trivs idea w/unique ammo linked to H reload. Simple to understand, Genuine execution reward & not spammable.
- H reload, use corresponding button on just frame to load 1 unique bullet
- Normal H reload all random.
- M reload half random/normal. Just frame for 3 of the same unique bullet.
- Hold back to backload for any reload strength.
Think this truly makes her gun a solid mechanic because it feels flat when the gun's one of the main draws of playing her.
Besides reload, hope she can spend ammo to onslaught cancel on hit. Can't cheat IPS/Undizzy so dont see any issue except more cool routes & just more w/what still feels a bit stiff. Sure dash is fine but kinda wanna see it a bit faster too like a normal hop-dash.
Dahlia ice is the most obvious thing that needs to be reworked. But I think it is important not to just remove armor break and call it good. Imo armor break should transfer to a different projectile (maybe railgun as that would be the most balanced and make it more desirable to use).
As for her other ammo choices:
As it stands now: Normal shot: it's the normal shot. Drops on 2 character hits. Good all round tool Shotgun: opponent move, damage, good mix tool Railgun: long range poke, knockdown Fire: double touch (on hit), ok mix tool but there are much better choices with the other shots. Ice: opponent hold, armor break, multi hit, space control (obviously the best to load at the moment) Lightning: space control, short opponent hold, multi hit, good mix tool
The only other change I think is necessary is the 2nd hit of fire -> don't disappear on hit. That way it would be more useful for trades and setups. (it is pretty useless now except for a few unique situations).
Nitpicks:
lightning and ice are still very similar, only differentiated by the longer hold time of ice and the air hold and non arch ability of lightning. This is ok but it would be nice if they were a bit more unique. They are both multi-hitting and used as space control and opponent hold. Ice being better for hold and lightning being better for space control because of its slow moving nature and non-arch. So maybe remove the multi hit from ice and give it something else like when it hits the ground it makes a small barrier, maybe 2 ice shots makes the barrier bigger-- something like that that makes it truly stand on its own. Lightning could wall bounce off the ground and celling traveling in a straight line. it would be interesting to play around witch such ideas in alpha/beta. It also would be nice if normal shot didn't drop on two characters.
With the changes I mentioned: Normal shot: it's the normal shot.-- (added doesn't drop with 2 characters) Shotgun: opponent move, damage Railgun: long range poke, knockdown, armor break --(added armor break) Fire: double touch (on hit), after first hit projectile doesn't disappear on player hit. -- (added after first hit projectile doesn't disappear on player hit) Ice: opponent hold, ice wall -- (removed multi-hit, removed armor break, added "ice wall") Lightning: space control, wall, ground celling bounce, short opponent hold, multi hit-- (added ground, celling bounce)
This seems a bit more balanced keeping every shot unique and useful with no shot being outstanding compared to the others. Lightning may be a bit more favorable but that could be balanced with damage reduction, and to be fair I don't know if ice-wall is a good idea or not but I think ice would need something else if armor break and multi-hit are removed.
(I still think there should be a way to choose shots with normal reload as discussed in the dahlia beta thread) -- I honestly never use mp/hp reload as it only leads to problems with combos-- instead I just use last call mid combo and mix.
I don't agree with this take at all. Ice Shot definitely isn't her best bullet and really is NOT that bad against anyone besides big band. Other armour characters wont mind it if you just load 6 shots because they aren't too fat to move out the way. I don't think any of these changes would really be productive for dahlia. Her special bullets are completely fine and for her best Last Call set play its required to use all of them, even railgun.
Id say if you want to improve this character slightly you remove some of her weirder restrictions. Like not being able to call assists when you use onslaught. For Onslaught it sort of feels like a coding oversight that turned into a balanced design to me since it is listed as a special move and doesn't count as an airdash, Why is she missing a universal mechanic? Counter Giving you stage 2 combos would be a really strong buff and would definitely give her the highest damage in the game off of a meter-less reversal but id say that the risk of whiffing counter and exploding is so high that the reward should match it.
Ice Shot definitely isn't her best bullet and really is NOT that bad against anyone besides big band.
Nah, everyone has to respect it, you try to trade it with a fireball it still explodes and does 3 hits, Bella also can't even reflect to try and get her turn back because you'd have to reflect all the hits. Sure some characters have an easier time than Big Band dealing with it but Ice shot really is a mistake, really weird to me that it was released like this because it is clearly the strongest shot.
You get a multihit shot that breaks armor and gives you ages to confirm hits of off, it sure isn't the best in every aspect but if ppl are constantly loading 6 Ice Shots then we have a problem.
Which is? Because I don't remember airdash being universal
For all airdash characters expect dahlia when you use an airdash you can still call your assists. This gives them stronger pressure and safety in the air in general. Dahlia cant use assists when she onslaughts, even on the ground. I guess this is so you cant do onslaught j.lk and convert off her overhead without empower, but the thing about that is since the hitstun on j.lk is so low that to even convert off it without empower in the first place you need to call your assists even before you do the move, so it seems like a pointless oversight to me.
Nah, everyone has to respect it, you try to trade it with a fireball it still explodes and does 3 hits, Bella also can't even reflect to try and get her turn back because you'd have to reflect all the hits. Sure some characters have an easier time than Big Band dealing with it but Ice shot really is a mistake, really weird to me that it was released like this because it is clearly the strongest shot.
You get a multihit shot that breaks armor and gives you ages to confirm hits of off, it sure isn't the best in every aspect but if ppl are constantly loading 6 Ice Shots then we have a problem.
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with dahlia's kit gets pretty owned by armour so id say something like ice shot is necessary. Without it she won't be able to contest band or other strong reversals at all. All Shots trigger when traded with another projectile (EX: Fire Shot) with it ice shot just has the longest lasting effect with an easy hit so its more noticeable. If its still too much id say make it so if you hit dahlia while she's doing ice shot pressure the multi-hits will go away.
with dahlia's kit gets pretty owned by armour so id say something like ice shot is necessary. Without it she won't be able to contest band or other strong reversals at all.
It does not need to be multihit to counter armor, its armor breaking property already did that.
I feel like the multihit property was already overkill for ice, it should've been on electric (or moreso than it is) imo.
Outside of ice dahlia has a multihit 2lk, a multihit 5mp, electric bullet and a counter that has armor break. If you're losing to armor it's not her kit's fault.
I was just thinking that too. Maybe it can come back as an empowered version, only it doesn't use up empowerment. Come to think of it, maybe each ammo type should have empowered versions too. Each empowered bullet types can only be used once before they return back to normal the second time they're used, so they are not abused easily (ice's op advantage might need to be tied to this if necessary).
Can peacock's bombs be destroyed, not just interacted with, as a minor nerf to her? It would be less tedious if any other character's disjoint attacks can deal with bombs easily.
So, I feel like the most universally accepted opinion in terms of balace right now is that painwheel is the weakest character. And while I'm sure the devs already have ideas they want to experiment with in the upcoming balance patch, I want to share my perspective on things I'd like to see get looked at for her:
Currently, I think painwheel is a really strong character overall, her damage is awesome, her neutral is great, install is like top 3 DHCs in the game, etc. But a lot of her kit is really really janky or just flat out bad, so I really do think she needs changes. If we're trying to keep things to a minimum, I think these are the most important aspects to focus on:
Her meterbuild is legitimately unbelievable sometimes. I think this is primarily because her combo theory revolves almost entirely around buer, and since buer is a hitgrab, you end up scaling your combo right off the bat and build no meter for the rest of the combo.
Proposition:
You could probably just increase meter gain on buer to make combos a bit more in line with everyone else, or at least let her have normal meterbuild during install.
Between the unnecessarily tight links, cross-under shenanigans and buer just nothaving a hitbox, it can be REALLY frustrating comboing with this character. Being forced to do multiple 3-4f links for regular bnbs on top of high APM and super janky moves is really bad, to the point of people dropping pw for not being able to combo online. Really I can't say I blame them.
Propositions:
1. 2mp should pull the opponent down and towards you like annie's 5lk, this would make some confirms and other restand situations a lot more reliable. This would also would fix some other jank like L nails and 5hk whiffing after it.
2. Speeding up 6hk just by 1-2 frames so it combos from 2lk would be great. That or increasing range on 2mk would be huge for making max range 2lk finally not useless (honestly even having a shorter 2lk that fully works would be preferable imo).
3. Might be a bit heavy-handed, but I think she could have a buffer after land-cancelling an attack (maybe just from flight) to make important links like buer fly 6jlk 5mp/2mk more consistent. That or just speed up her mediums a bit.
4. And please, PLEASE give buer a real hitbox man... if you have to nerf 2hp or 6hk or whatever, I don't care. I just want a move that actually works.
'Bad defense' is also one of the most common things people bring up when discussing pw's weaknesses, but imo the only problem is how incredibly inconsistent her options are. Thresher only has hitstop during that first little baby hitbox on top of her, deathcrawl's hitboxes are a JOKE, lv3 loses to throws and only has 3 hits of armor and even with charged normals hatred guard goes away if you release the button even a single frame before the move becomes active so it trades and just straight up loses a lot more than it should.
Propositions:
1. Extend the hitstop on thresher until the second hitbox spawns or make it spawn earlier along with the first and on hit leave the opponent closer after it finishes to prevent cross-under jank after follow-ups.
2. Reduce hurtboxes and increase hitboxes on death crawl.
3. Increase invul on lv3 to beat throws and give it proper hyper armor.
4. If the start-up of a charged normal is increased at all make the armor last until it overlaps with the first active frame.
Even though I'm listing these as "other stuff" some of the changes here I feel just as strongly about (if not more), but still, probably not as important in regards to pw's meta relevance.
2lp- This button is a TWELVE frame jab dude. I would much rather remove the armor on it (it's 6f armor as opposed to 3f on 5lp) and bring the start-up down to 7f so 2lp becomes the abare/combo jab and 5lp stays the more deliberate armored one. Regardless, 12f 2lp just makes no sense.
2lk/5lk- 11f start-up is just so much... and that's on top of 2lk not working at max range and having an insanely clunky dash. I've seen people ask for 7f 5lk so it becomes "the fast button" but I'd much rather have that on 2lp, I think both 2lk and 5lk could just lose 2-3f of start-up and it would be fine.
2hk- 40f start-up is way too much for just 2 hits of armor. Should just match the other ground heavies and have 3.
jmk- The animation on this move looks a lot like it should have a much better cross-up hitbox. Would be a bit much if it fully matched it but a little bit of extra consistency on cross-ups would be nice (if anything, her knee could have a hitbox).
Lv1 nails- Do the lv1 projectiles really need to be that slow? It's already one of the smallest projectiles in the game, why does it also have to be the slowest? For comparison, it comes out in 29f, while annie H crescent comes out in 23f (its active in 34 but the projectile spawns in 23). I feel like even if you shaved off 10f off of this move's start-up it would still be fine.
M Buer- Needing 3 bars or corner to get anything from a risky mid range call-out is awful. Increase hitstop on M buer so you can convert with install or at least just connect otgless death crawl after.
Tag-in- HOW IS THIS STILL TECHABLE???? MY BROTHER IN CHRIST, ITS A HITGRAB. and why is it so tiny...
Charged moves as assists- Lacking in assist variety has always been an issue for pw, especially being a character that really wants to be played outside of point. Charged nail assist specifically would help a lot with that.
H buer xx Thresher- Doesn't work in the corner only on bella and eliza (its weird on squigly and band but works), increasing the first hitbox a bit to be universal would be very much appreciated.
L nail- Being able to buffer dash and flight after L nail would be really really helpful.
Hatred guard- Honestly, hatred guard is a pretty poorly developed mechanic in general, but I don't know how realistic it is to expect a rework to it to make the absorbed damage actually do anything interesting. If anything, I'd much rather have only the heavy buttons return damage so you have more control over when you wanna use it, or preferably, just make the returned damage not scale with the combo. Absorbing 4k damage to get an unavoidable extra 200 on a scaled confirm is not fun.
Ground dash- Reduce start-up a bit. Long shot but damn this plus her buttons all being so slow feels terrible. Would be fine if 2lk was faster I think.
make the flight input just KK (was this tried before? I'd like to test it)
bring back point pinion, potentially with armor on M and H
if pinion stays assist only, make it flight cancellable after ACing
Honestly, even with everything that's interesting about this character, she feels like the most half-assed design possible from a dev that absolutely hated the characters that she was inspired by, and we've been very slowly ironing out the jank. But there's still a LOT that's still in the game, and I wanna live to see the day when painwheel will finally be free.
Make Beo's M chair toss grab invuln. it's barely useful as is (like 2 setups and on incoming). It would make sense except for the fact that peacock has L bang! It's a pretty useless move so giving it this super niche application would be nice.
Make Beo's M chair toss grab invuln. it's barely useful as is (like 2 setups and on incoming). It would make sense except for the fact that peacock has L bang! It's a pretty useless move so giving it this super niche application would be nice.
I agree, it makes for a good mind game when going for H or M hurl if it's implemented.
It’s been too long since my last post - personal apologies for promising a bunch of things then going radio silent immediately after, again. As stated in our “State Of The Game - When’s Marie?” post, we pivoted to prioritizing Marie’s release in Skullgirls Mobile first before her playable Alpha in 2nd Encore. This has taken a significant amount of time from the core 2E team - but now that she has shipped on Skullgirls Mobile, it’s full steam ahead on 2nd Encore again.
Marie is just about buttoned up and ready to go for Alpha actually, so she could be releasing on Steam pretty soon here. Some amount of balance changes will hopefully be arriving in the same patch that begins said Alpha period for Marie, so I’m here to chat about some of those changes here. As a reminder, the balance patch can ship separately from Marie after she fully releases on console if we need more time for changes to sit and be tested. While she was originally targeting a December release on all platforms, there may be some complications with that due to how early each build must be submitted for each of the consoles in order to be approved well before December when stores shut down for holidays, so we'll have more news on that hopefully soon.
Please note we will only be discussing gameplay and potential balance changes in this thread, all off topic discussion will be deleted.
I’d like to dive into a few topic starters to get a read of the room, as well as share some of our thoughts on a few things that have been talked about in previous pages.
JUST BUFF EVERYONE
This is a discussion had many pages back, but on the subject of fighting fire with fire, powerful options with powerful options, etc... I disagree with the sentiment that removing options or powerful things a character does is the wrong call. We have seen characters lose powerful tools time and time again with just about every balance patch in Skullgirls. I can think of a major thing a character lost at some point because it was deemed to powerful at some random given moment in the meta, and reflecting on those things in hindsight makes those decisions seem questionable - "did this character really need to lose this...?" is something we've been saying for 11 years now, haha. Often times even mid tier characters would have to receive some sort of nerf to trade for any buff to try and keep the scales balanced. You can argue that every powerful thing that is removed makes it harder to have a powerful answer to another powerful problem down the road, but in the past, removing some options that are considered too strong helped reduce the gap between power tiers more effectively (and in a more controlled way with predictable results) compared to say, giving everyone an option that is just as broken.
Some powerful tools or things that immediately come to mind that were nerfed in the past off the top of my head:
• Fukua old M Shadow
• Peacock's old Teleport + Assist (any assist, from anywhere)
• Fast Parasoul TK Tears with JLP
• Double's L Bomber > Puddle being safe on block
• Eliza's Horus trade / protection (bird insurance! remember that?)
• Fukua's H Drill > BFF combo, H Drill > Fireball Super safeness... too many Fukua things to list honestly!
• Filia jHK being overhead
• Cerebella's strike invuln Diamond Drop
I think a lot of these things could return all at the same time, and for the characters that aren't top 3 it would probably be "fine", but I don't think that's realistically happening. I can see a reality where characters are never nerfed and we're constantly making old characters character more and more broken, but in my opinion, that has never been the Skullgirls way so it's not how we plan to do things this go around - just getting that out of the way up front to set expectations.
TEAM BUILDING, CHARACTER CHOICE, AND GLUE CHARACTERS
I think it's good for characters to not be able to check every box that you'd want them to, it incentivizes you to come up with a team and a strategy to accomplish the things you set out to do. I like to think of it like distributing stats in an RPG, you can put 20 in strength but perhaps you can't cast spells as a result. Maybe you have a strong DHC damage and kill potential from round start, but poor safe DHCs and one of your assist slots is just being used for damage... that kind of thing. Skullgirls' characters generally have every tool you could want for just about everything, and they have solutions to most problems (that's good!), so it's not as pronounced as this of course.
Going back to the drawing board at team select to try new things is an important part of the team game loop, if it feels solved because you have team(s) that do everything, that's not very fun IMO. If you have a character with great assists, good DHCs, high damage, good vortex, great meter dump, comeback supers, good point neutral... perhaps some of that should be toned down. Double was/is in that situation for a decade and was constantly receiving blows to egregious parts of her kit because of it.
If a character has so many things going for them that when you're looking at team select you're doing yourself a disservice by not considering picking them first, that starts to encroach on team building diversity, and that's when I (personally) think changes are worth considering. This is a team game, so characters with good assists and DHCs that are easy to slot into a team will see a ton of use, and that's to be expected and fine, but there should be incentives for variety within those roles. Going back to the first section - yes you could just buff everyone to also be as powerful as whatever the most powerful "must pick" character is for team building at the moment, but that's unlikely to be the approach we take here.
TWO TOUCHES
I'd love to get a read of the room on how we're all feeling about two touch teams from round start. Specifically dash up cLK or overhead, then one mix up into death from round start conditions and spacing, but also for the next character arriving on incoming when teams have ~1.5 bars and can build another one easily for the DHC unscale in the corner.
Currently, we lean towards making changes that push things towards three touches from these conditions. This could manifest in a couple different ways:
• Small health increase, to keep combo damage consistent with past data.
• Reducing the DHC unscale value from 70% to something smaller. DHC unscale adjustments would perhaps require specific override rules for some supers to keep some supers viable, but we'd cross that bridge when we come to it.
• Other damage adjustments where needed.
Note that slippery zoners may need a bit of extra attention here to make sure that needing to touch Peacock or Robo-Fortune one more time to kill them isn't a huge buff. Other changes might be needed after this too! A simple goal, but the changes can be tricky to get right depending on how it shakes out.
So that's how we're feeling at least, how about others? Some people preferred TODs from vanilla more and didn't like the addition of Undizzy, so I expect that will extend again to anything that makes the game require more touches to kill. We've seen health increases and more mechanics added in the past to keep things going back and forth and generally "two player", so this feels like a recurring theme on brand for patches.
MAX UNDIZZY LOOPS + DAMAGE
We've seen changes to max Undizzy start sequences in the past and I think we'll be seeing changes to them again. If you're starting a combo on a character that is at max Undizzy, our leaning is to crank up the punishment for doing so even more. Few things could be done here:
Keep in mind, the following changes would occur when starting a combo while the Undizzy bar is full, but not when starting a combo below max Undizzy, then maxing it out later in the combo.
• Applying even harsher combo scaling. It's 50% right now, it could be as low as 20%! Even lower scaling also means more meter for the defender due to inverse meter scaling.
• Immediately starting combo stages at stage 3. Pretty bold, but it would certainly move the needle and force people to back off.
• Giving players access to super gold bursts (the fully invuln one, that keeps all of your Undizzy) to escape air throw burst bait loops when some conditions are met.
• Potentially having said super gold burst (the one that keeps Undizzy... this needs a name... "Super Gold Burst" perhaps?) put the victim into a sliding knockdown so that you can dash over and be plus as they wake up. Guessing correctly on these max Undizzy loops only to knock a zoner away and have them immediately set up projectiles is pretty rough, this would flip the advantage and deter these high Undizzy loops as intended by the mechanic originally.
ASSIST CHANGES
There's been some discussion about increasing the assist cooldown when your assist leaves, but I think the fast speed of assist calls is pretty integral to the feeling of Skullgirls. Assist lockout cooldown (when an assist is actually hit) could be increased as an experiment, but I'd want to distinguish between projectile hits and physical hits so that zoners aren't locking your assist out even longer when you're getting walled out.
Different topic: Assist hits that start a combo set damage scaling at 66% for reduced reward, but counter hit assist hits start at 90% on top of the bonus CH damage from the hit itself. I think DP assists are ignoring the forced scaling and proration, since they are almost always hitting for bonus CH damage and setting scaling at 90%. Given how strong these kind of assists are, I think we will experiment with assists always scaling to 66%, CH or not. Assists themselves getting counter called and counter hit should probably still scale to 90% instead of 50%. Since damage scaling is set per victim this hopefully shouldn't be too tricky to take into account.
CHARACTER DISCUSSION, IN THE ORDER OF CHARACTER SELECT SCREEN SQUARES SURE WHY NOT
SQUIGLY
• No urgent changes at this time, changes could arrive later or after another wave of discussion.
• I think she's a decent baseline for character strength. Has some powerful strengths, obvious weaknesses, she's very good or "there are better picks" tier depending on who you ask and who's playing her. Love it, personally!
• Could experiment with giving her access to uncharged versions of specials (while charged) if she performs QCB instead of QCF.
BIG BAND
• Aware of the discussion about his defensive options many pages back. Parry timing could be adjusted, but adjusting parry timing won't have much impact on his defensive option selects... Sure they'll be some % harder to pull off, but the functionality will be the same.
• Timpany checks a ton of boxes, I get it: Massive hitbox, post flash unblockable, difficult to punish, and more. However if you are running into it face first on his incoming that's your fault imo, especially when easy set ups exist to meaty the blind spot while avoiding the drums... That said, I'm not opposed to making it easier to punish for the slower characters or adjusting something else about it even still.
ELIZA
• I think some things about Sekhmet could be made a little bit less frustrating to deal with, with more obvious windows to go for a hit on her (if you risk it) when playing neutral with her or dealing with her mix ups.
• Sekhmet backflip likely won't be allowed if the point blocks it even if it hits an assist, just like how Upperkhat and Fiber work, for consistency.
• Crimson Scourge shouldn't work on dead characters.
• Maybe Throne can try red bounce instead of blue bounce.
• Crimson Scourge as an Eliza super (not a Sekhmet super) after Eliza taunts as suggested elsewhere could be a fun experiment. It would let her DHC into it after taunting, but not from round start if she's on second.
MS. FORTUNE
• I'm inclined to give a decent amount of weight to ideas for how to nerf Ms. Fortune from the Ms. Fortune players themselves, so many of these changes will be familiar to those who have kept up with the thread, and for those who experienced the short lived Ms. Fortune nerfs from the last patch before they were cut short.
• cLK head loops will be removed.
• jLK will see tweaks.
• Reduced confirm time from Nom seems reasonable.
• Worth trying changes to hit the head more reliably for all characters when it gets stuck behind them, in addition to perhaps locking it out for longer.
• Making her supers easier to punish when they end near the head is a good suggestion.
• She may need targeted damage nerfs on top of any other global changes we may experiment with.
• I'd like to continue the previous experiment of making her easier to hit when she's up backing away from you, but with a new approach.
• Something about her plethora of very effective defensive options will probably be adjusted, be it Fiber, Headroll, or both.
• For Fiber, letting Ms. Fortune get thrown for attempting it by moving it to strike invuln feels like the right call here. For how fast she can slip away if you're not jumping in front of her, more options to call out Fiber in neutral (with or without an assist backing it, which makes it especially difficult to counter) would be ideal. Making it more unsafe on block so the slower characters can get into position to punish it as suggested seems reasonable too. We'll see where everything shakes out with her defensive options and we're still discussing internally.
• On the often mentioned topic of "just make the head not mess up my combos please"...
→ There are multiple ways that hitting pet characters can work on other fighting games, and they come with flaws.
→ Style 1: You hit Ms. Fortune's head, go into hitpause, you keep your active hitbox the entire time, but now your button has 12+ active frames. In games with this implementation (Arcsys), you'll see someone strike a pet character with a heavy, then the opponent dashes in super late and gets hit by the 20th active frame on a heavy normal and explodes for it. I don't think we'll be doing this.
→ Style 2: You hit Ms. Fortune's head, you don't go into hitpause and your active frames aren't extended NOR are they cut short. Only the pet experiences the properties of a hit making contact. Now characters can rapid fire cLP on the head which looks very jank and deals tons of damage very quickly, since they aren't going into hitpause. This especially doesn't work for Ms. Fortune herself, as now when she suki cancels off her own head with sHK she experiences no hitpause when doing so. Boy, if you thought cLK loops were bad now...
→ Style 3: Little Eddie, Zappa's dog, Dizzy's fish, lol.
→ Style ?: If there are other more elegant ways to handle this, I have no qualms admitting I'm unfamiliar with them.
→ None of these styles really account for a projectile hitting the head earlier than the body and causing it to end the hit early, and this phenomenon happens all the time during happy birthday combos that involve projectiles. (EX: sHP sHP x Napalm Shot will almost always drop one character out)
→ The correct "make the head not mess up my combos" implementation is subjective, and they all have different problems. I am going to infer that the way it works now is the desired implementation during her creation, and the least problematic of all implementations - no? Spot fixing issues like Beowulf cMK not working correctly when the head nearby however is doable, so I can look at those!
PEACOCK
• Look at SoiD losing its hitbox and / or having a delay on dropping post flash as mentioned.
• Something to give players a bit more time to live and room to try thingswhen dealing with her zoning at fullscreen is worth discussing IMO. I'd like to see players have more time to experiment and use their character specific tools to try and get in on her without taking over 2000 damage every time they bump into a projectile that combos into another one following behind it. This damage adds up fast and makes it feel like you only have a handful of attempts to get in before you lose the character - I don't think that feeling will change drastically, but perhaps it's worth tweaking some things about this. Robo-Fortune lost CH damage bonus damage on Beams for a similar reason many moons ago, and I've been thinking about the same for Peacock. Level 1 item drop on CH (often sneaking above and interrupting something you're trying) hits for a whopping 1275. Extra metergain for the defender and/or damage scaling on projectile starters would give players access to more super options to try and make a play with. I'm mentioning all of this in the spirit of having her fullscreen presence be more two player than it is now, while still keeping the options she has access to more or less the same. Eager to hear other perspectives.
"Lenny needs nerfs and/or should be 2 bars"
• Making Lenny 2 bars and calling it a day is probably the simplest solution.
• There are other things that I think could be explored instead while still keeping it a one bar super:
→ No CH damage bonus.
→ Significantly less damage.
→ Peacock builds zero meter while it's out, down from 30% (?) or whatever the current penalty is.
→ Lenny has a hit when placed, and this hit can be blocked making M Bang x Lenny unsafe. (M Bang x Lenny will be unsafe as one of the experiments for her, this change aside. One bar safe on block reversals were removed for Double and Fukua, Peacock should really not be keeping it as a zoner.)
→ The hit from Lenny could also be implemented to remove the happy birthday L Bang x Lenny into teleport 50/50, completely safe, guess-for-your-assist-character's-life mix up, which I think is very strongand worth looking at.
"Bombs should go away when Peacock is hit"
• Sure, let's talk about that. Bombs sticking around so they can trade favorably with opponents in defensive situations feels like a pretty big part of her kit. It may be too strong of a perk for her to have given how quick and slippery she is, and how fast she can get bombs out.
• There are two things I'd prefer to try first before "bombs go away on hit", instead:
→ Bombs go away on hit, but only after a delay. Using M or H to trade against a dash in or jump in would still be viable, but if you just called the bomb mere frames before getting hit, it would explode before it reaches her. Standing inside of L George and playing footsies as you walk backwards with him would still be viable, but him walking across the entire screen to interrupt would not be, etc. You can envision how that would work hopefully.
→ Bombs have atrocious damage scaling applied if they hit the opponent after Peacock goes into hitstun. This experiment was tried briefly before, but this would be a more aggressive version, maybe even scaling down to 20%. Peacock would very much be incentivized to reset ASAP or knock the opponent away, lest she donates tons of meter to the opponent for a small amount of damage in return.
→ Could do weaker versions of both of these ideas, but combined.
PAINWHEEL
• If Painwheel is receiving significant buffs to her point game, she will receive nerfs to her strengths as a "play me second for DHC damage" position by reducing Hatred Install damage and such.
• I think the "Nail Storage" idea (FC from Nails to save the charge percentage for later) sounds really fun actually! However currently each nail adds Undizzy separately, so using this in combos wouldn't be possible without some minor engine changes.
• Some amount of "QOL" (buffs) to hitboxes and frame data here and there as often brought up can be looked at for her. • HATRED GUARD DISCUSSION
The Tl;dr of how her hatred guard damage storage works currently, is when painwheel armors through something, she stores that damage, up to 33% of opponents total team hp, and then returns a portion of that damage back with any move that *can* have armor. (33% on lights, 50% on medium, 66% on heavies, with the damage scaled to the combo scaling (very important b/c most pw starters from neutral do not have good scaling), and 120% on the last hit of lvl 3, not scaled to the combo)
The idea behind the concept is for painwheel to get a bit more damage on reward for armoring something, and potentially get a very large payoff at the cost of a decent chunk of HP by armoring through assist calls repeatedly and then retreating.
Don’t want to numbers dump, though i did so spreadsheet work, and tl;dr if you armor through something and then CH them you get like 500-800 more damage, and if you armor through a full ground string they take a decent chunk more. Doing [5mp] through a beo jhp pays out with 1594 dmg on that hit (+ about 550 from the stored damage) while doing charged sweep vs a high damage ground string, annie 2lk 2mp 2hp will do an extra 2k damage from the stored damage if it counterhits. That is an impressive chunk, though keep in mind theres a lot of counterplay for the person getting armored (hit confirm to sweeps, multi hits, call assist, launcher suki cancel)
And that is the complete sum of the mechanic, its extra damage in situations she is already getting a counter hit starter, or if you armor through assists a decent amount, a slight compensation for how her most common starters (jmp and air throw) scale the combo to about half.
The problem with the mechanic (besides its strengths being justification for why she has the worst armor of all the armored moves in the game) is that it is a basically invisible mechanic that does not affect your decision making in meaningful ways in almost all situations: It is more reward for when she is already right, and NOT a mechanic that is worthwhile building a strategy around, or even committing any mental attention to.
I can armor H brass assists, and take 1750 damage each time, and then the next time i get a hit I cash out at best 1155 from each move i armored (2lk 2mk 2hp hitconfirm) and most likely closer to 500-600 off throw/jmp confirms (high hitting jmp routing being jmp fc jmk fc jmk 2mp 2hp is 50% scaling by the time the heavy will hit). That is a very very bad payoff for taking almost 2k dmg and committing air time and a flight charge to armor an assist that the opponent is probably moving directly behind.
Ultimately, it is a mechanic that has almost zero impact on decision making outside going way net minus on HP vs high dmg assists, and armoring lenny via dhc (very funny though). I’ve gone months of playing painwheel completely forgetting it is a mechanic, and i’ve had other pw players (ratbaby, PME) tell me the exact same thing. It just has reason to be in the mental stack of the character, and it could be made much cooler.
→ I don't disagree, Hatred Guard could probably be more interesting if Painwheel had access to something new and fun after using the mechanic properly instead of just dishing some bonus CH damage back ASAP, although that simple mechanic in itself is still powerful, especially post bug fix where it properly returns damage to assist and point on the same hit. She can sometimes have a reason to try and armor a bunch of single hitting assist calls in neutral so that she can get in and dish it back with a move that converts stored damage well, since there are different return values of stored damage depending on the move that connects, but it doesn't go too much further than that.
→ This is off the cuff and probably even irresponsible to just throw out there, but something like "aftering armoring some number of hit(s), her next Buer is the boosted installed version" could be pretty fun and gives her a reason to fish for armor more often, and dissuades opponents from feeding her easy to armor assist calls for a bit of counter play.
FILIA
• No urgent changes at this time, changes could arrive later or after another wave of discussion.
• I expect Filia will be in a very good spot if characters better than her are brought down a notch.
CEREBELLA
• No urgent changes at this time, changes could arrive later or after another wave of discussion.
• jHP should hit overhead when not used as an instant overhead at the very least as suggested, so we'll look at that.
VALENTINE
• Will be looking at legitimate QOL concerns, things like cMK[2] vacuuming a bit mentioned earlier makes sense, cHP not sliding under opponents and whiffing if they are slightly airborne, etc. Would like to focus on these things first, let's bang out as many of them as we can.
• If there is an up to date collection of these kinds of issues in one neat and tidy place that someone can share with me as well, that would be helpful!
• The long awaited "Bypass Fix" (always creates a hitbox for at least one frame) is not just a QOL bug fix IMO, it's a straight up buff. I think it's going to allow for new combos that were otherwise impossible before, and may boost her corner damage significantly which could need more changes depending on how extreme it is. I'm alright with trying this for the move to be consistent, but I think it's a large change.
• With all of the above in mind, I'd like to experiment with some nerfs to Orange Vial to "compensate".
PARASOUL
• No urgent changes at this time, changes could arrive later or after another wave of discussion.
• May be looking at buffing her counter-zoning via [M] and [H] Egret, and some other minor improvements here and there based on some comments in the thread.
• As for buffing sLP hitstun, I'm a bit worried it might give her access to better confirms from that tipper range where she's just supposed to harass you into a Napalm Shot without a combo. That said, it probably wouldn't be a huge deal if she could do more from that range since it's her area of strength.
• Openly acknowledging that I'm biased towards always leaving Parasoul alone, so I appreciate the feedback for her. More perspectives are always welcome especially if players are agreeing on things that could make her life easier. I've got my own thoughts like making it a bit harder to jump out of her overhead strings, and reducing her susceptibility to PBGC, but I'm always weary of buffing her without trade off.
DOUBLE
• If other characters more powerful than Double are receiving adjustments, I'd like to keep changes minimal for the first round(s) and reevaluate at a later time to see where she shakes out. • I like the QOL suggestion for pulling victims closer towards Cat Heads so they don't fall out at long distances, we'll see if there's a good way to do that.
FUKUA
• I'm not 100% convinced Fukua is fine as is, and that she has enough strengths to warrant getting picked over many other characters right now. • To start, we'll probably try removing her life drain on shadows so that she's not hurting herself when executing her game plan, even just for resets. I don't think holding shadows in neutral without life drain is very powerful compared to every other zoning tool we have going on right now.
BEOWULF
• Plenty of chatter about Beowulf internally - just to lay it all out on the table transparently, here's where we're at...
• Even with changes to Beowulf in previous patches, he's still at his most powerful when he's building hype using resource building assists such as A-Train, then spending it to two touch off of his oki, or TOD you even if he's saved up enough meter. Attempting to move Beowulf away from this gameplan is met with some amount of friction, as Beowulf A-Train players will be frustrated at having the most effective strategy for the character removed. As a result, it feels very difficult to change anything about him and allow for more viable playstyles, so we're at a bit of a logjam here.
• The way Beowulf fundamentally engages with hype and builds hype would likely have to be reworked to let him be played freely in different positions with flexible team compositions. For some patches closer to his release I'll remind you that Beowulf couldn't build three hype with taunt, and had less ways to dump a ton of hype on EX moves during a combo, since many EX finishers didn't regrab - he may have been worse, but he wasn't shackled to resource assists for doing a ton of damage.
• Summary: For as long as Beowulf remains a character that wants to taunt in the middle of a combo with an assist call (due to how hype building works), he will probably pilot the same as before. I expect him to lose his effective 0 bar two touches (!) in some of the global two touch changes mentioned way above, so this may be our collective best shot to give him different ways to be played. If the Beowulf + A-Train players want him to stay with the same gameplan, with the same assist dependencies, we'll have to figure that out too. Thoughts welcome!
ROBO-FORTUNE
• We'll continue the H Beam nerf experiments where we left off last time, something about that move will be toned down I expect.
• Magnet doesn't need to be rising unblockable on DHC when someone tries to bait your super with a jump.
• Not 100% Robo-Fortune related, but I think we'll try bringing the minimum crouching height down to Dahlia's current crouching height. This means all characters can duck under H Beam.
• There may be some other adjustments that are TBD.
UMBRELLA
• At the moment, we are still discussing Umbrella and need more time before we have anything meaningful to share here. I'd rather get this post out instead of holding it up until we've had a chance to do that. Sorry!
ANNIE
• Worth reading the "JUST BUFF EVERYONE" and "TEAM BUILDING, CHARACTER CHOICE, AND GLUE CHARACTERS" sections at the top of my post again. I expect some players will disagree with us and ask for everyone to be as strong as Annie, but I think we're just going to have to respectfully disagree and figure out a way to move forward with some tough calls.
• Star Power (Install) is expected to see a full rework, with higher meter cost up front to activate it like a normal super. The goal will be to make the state more fun to be in, more fun to fight against, with a much shorter duration. She could end up strictly more powerful than before while in install, but with it costing more meter and lasting for a shorter amount of time I think it should be alright, and anything is more fun to fight against than stars are currently!
→ Stars will likely be retired on many normals and must be summoned explicitly on select attacks in a different ways.
→ We'll experiment with powered up special moves much like you see in Skullgirls Mobile during her install.
→ I'd like to try giving her a RC that drains a lot of her remaining power.
→ Some attacks may get cooler properties.
→ Think Dragon Install / HoS instead of Dark Phoenix.
• We'll try having Crescent Cut be less effective when thrown out carelessly up close. Currently it reaches the ability to trade extremely fast.
• There will probably be some tweaks to her normals (frame data and/or hitboxes)
• Destruction Pillar assist will likely see increased landing recovery, and have Annie land in front of the character who blocked her more often instead of landing safely behind them. These changes are to make the aftermath and risk of a blocked DP assist call more in line with other assists.
• cLP may get some slight nerfs.
• Depending on how some of the global experiments shared way above go, she may receive the right amount of toning down to fall in line with other characters without many other changes. (Reduced two touch potential, DHC unscale changes hurting her Meteor Strike damage in the corner, her throw loops at max Undizzy, etc.)
BLACK DAHLIA
• Something(s) will change with Ice Shot, and perhaps a few other things for shots.
• JHK confirms may see a scaling penalty. • H Reload may see changes, but it may not! At the moment, I'm pretty happy with how H is being used, but I could see us changing around the order of where the bullets are loaded into the chamber such as [3 and 5], or[2 and 5], instead of the current [3 and 6].
• M Reload could be more interesting, so if there's an opportunity for control over your ammo choice, it would live here. I will mention that it's (obviously) very intentional Black Dahlia does not have access to: Reload + Pick shot type, Shoot shot type, Reload + Pick shot type, Shoot shot type...
• Empower shouldn't work on corpses and give you the buff.
I know this is, like, off topic to everything being discussed here, but I'm genuinely really curious as to why Beo's chair dance isn't invul like the rest of his other grab finishers. And I'm wondering if we could make it so, please and thank. Or if not, I'd like to know why at least cuz I can't tell if this is an oversight or on purpose.
This move isn't actually a throw, the victim is released and can be moved around, and he's delivering regular physical hits with his kicks. I don't think the core way this works will change, but I don't think it would be a big deal to make him invincible in case some Rube Goldberg incidents happen with projectiles that aren't in his favor and he's interrupted.
please reduce the end of match timer from 40sec to 20sec, as well as the char select screen from 80s to 30sec
really sick of prissy little idiots getting destroyed and then pissing me off by being useless and unkissable by waiting 40 seconds on end of stage, going to char select, wasting another 80 seconds then picking the same fucking team, then if they get to stage select thats yet ANOTHER 20 seconds eaten up just because little baby man couldn't handle a turtling double as solo beo
I'm hesitant to reduce it even more. As it is now, I barely have enough time to use the restroom or refill water between matches when I bump into a QM god at 3AM and want to run a set. I'd rather implement a "hold to exit" button or similar if the opponent is stalling, and consider bumping the timers back up honestly. ;_;
In the next build, in QM, you will also not be able to match with opponents you have recently played, or recently declined. So if you don't want to keep matching up against someone with poor ping or poor sportsmanship, you should be in the clear for a few minutes while they match with someone else.
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Oh good, we finally got the information we need that Marie's Alpha is dropping really soon, as well as the balance changes. It's my job to find out if Marie got her Orie palette or not in 2nd Encore. So she shall be. Also, I would like ingame indicators for certain characters please.
• If other characters more powerful than Double are receiving adjustments, I'd like to keep changes minimal for the first round(s) and reevaluate at a later time to see where she shakes out. • I like the QOL suggestion for pulling victims closer towards Cat Heads so they don't fall out at long distances, we'll see if there's a good way to do that.
Hey Liam!
As a Double enjoyer I agree with leaving her (mostly) alone. I only have two things I want to put on the table regarding her:
- If you're considering a vacuum on Cat Heads, can you also look at a consistency pass for L bomber? Currently, you can counterhit someone with the first hit, and whiff the second and go over the character, and be ~-26 or worse on counter hit. I've had this happen on many characters many times (my Oceania friends can back me on this), notably having this happen even on bigger characters like Cerebella. I can provide clips if you'd like to take a look.
- Luger is going to be brought up at some point. Mostly L, but H too. L Luger was nerfed (fair enough), though the current reward for hitting it on someone jumping at you is character and spacing specific. Big Band in particular has to be pretty much hugging you in order to convert with cHP xx cilia slide.
H luger also hits inconsistently in the corner against child characters unless you use jMP jHK to push yourself out of the corner, or use a similar air string and microwalk backwards and H luger afterwards. Is there potential for this to be looked at?
• Plenty of chatter about Beowulf internally - just to lay it all out on the table transparently, here's where we're at...
• Even with changes to Beowulf in previous patches, he's still at his most powerful when he's building hype using resource building assists such as A-Train, then spending it to two touch off of his oki, or TOD you even if he's saved up enough meter. Attempting to move Beowulf away from this gameplan is met with some amount of friction, as Beowulf A-Train players will be frustrated at having the most effective strategy for the character removed. As a result, it feels very difficult to change anything about him and allow for more viable playstyles, so we're at a bit of a logjam here.
• The way Beowulf fundamentally engages with hype and builds hype would likely have to be reworked to let him be played freely in different positions with flexible team compositions. For some patches closer to his release I'll remind you that Beowulf couldn't build three hype with taunt, and had less ways to dump a ton of hype on EX moves during a combo, since many EX finishers didn't regrab - he may have been worse, but he wasn't shackled to resource assists for doing a ton of damage.
• Summary: For as long as Beowulf remains a character that wants to taunt in the middle of a combo with an assist call (due to how hype building works), he will probably pilot the same as before. I expect him to lose his effective 0 bar two touches (!) in some of the global two touch changes mentioned way above, so this may be our collective best shot to give him different ways to be played. If the Beowulf + A-Train players want him to stay with the same gameplan, with the same assist dependencies, we'll have to figure that out too. Thoughts welcome!
Thanks for the update. Very curious on how this works out when it comes to beta but looking forward to the future.
Thanks for the update. Very curious on how this works out when it comes to beta but looking forward to the future.
Just to restate it, a lot of the ideas and topics shared above are there for the purposes for discussion. For characters like Beowulf especially, I don't think we'll be making large sweeping changes just hoping we find something that is agreeable with everyone.
Beowulf is likley to lose some of his strengths as a two touch god in the crossfire (not even as intentional targeted nerfs) if some of the global system changes go through that we've mentioned (still need to discuss!), so I bring up possibilities for Beowulf like this to give us all a chance to talk to figure out if there are some directions that everyone is on board with in these early stages.
• I'm not 100% convinced Fukua is fine as is, and that she has enough strengths to warrant getting picked over many other characters right now. • To start, we'll probably try removing her life drain on shadows so that she's not hurting herself when executing her game plan, even just for resets. I don't think holding shadows in neutral without life drain is very powerful compared to every other zoning tool we have going on right now.
I think this is a very nice start to balance fukua into an overall stronger character. thanks for the update.
• No urgent changes at this time, changes could arrive later or after another wave of discussion.
• I think she's a decent baseline for character strength. Has some powerful strengths, obvious weaknesses, she's very good or "there are better picks" tier depending on who you ask and who's playing her. Love it, personally!
• Could experiment with giving her access to uncharged versions of specials (while charged) if she performs QCB instead of QCF.
Thank you for the update. Really hope that the uncharged specials go through for squigly. Fingers crossed for charge ui later down the line if uncharged specials stick
Just to restate it, a lot of the ideas and topics shared above are there for the purposes for discussion. For characters like Beowulf especially, I don't think we'll be making large sweeping changes just hoping we find something that is agreeable with everyone.
Beowulf is likley to lose some of his strengths as a two touch god in the crossfire (not even as intentional targeted nerfs) if some of the global system changes go through that we've mentioned (still need to discuss!), so I bring up possibilities for Beowulf like this to give us all a chance to talk to figure out if there are some directions that everyone is on board with in these early stages.
For sure, I think the universal two touch/damage tone down should be interesting. I'm assuming at best, beo will end up two touching for a meter or two. regardless, I look forward to the beo discussions and see what possible routes he can go. thanks for your hard work as always.
• Something(s) will change with Ice Shot, and perhaps a few other things for shots.
Just an idea I wanted to toss out, but would making it so all three hits of ice shot land for the freeze to work be viable? Only other suggestion I had if anything was maybe just scale the combo heavily if ice shot lands first.
With all of the above in mind, I'd like to experiment with some nerfs to Orange Vial to "compensate"
Hi, I replied to this part only because you mentioned Vials, but will there be any changes to the Vial symbols? As it stands now, I cannot understand whether my opponent is loading green or orange vial since I'm colourblind. It'd be cool if you could read this (since i had already tried to make this issue know but everytime I try it just vanishes into thin air T_T).
Expect a little bias cuz i will be mostly giving my opinion about the characters i play (Eliza, Annie, Para) and Peacock wich is a characters that i think is way too strong right now.
First my thoughts on Eliza sugested changes:
I dont mind Sek being easier to be punished thats fine for me, but if we are getting a nerf on a characters that is already considered a low tier i would like some more relevant buffs than just throne red bounce to compensate, one thing that i would like to see is having her buttons hitbox and hurtboxes appear at the same time and maybe having giving Horus less recovery on block so you can do incoming mixups more safely and dont get punished as often if you try to anti air with it and your oponnent just jumps and block.
Annie:
I think that Annie current star power is very boring to use and im really excited to see how the rework will be
The global DP assist nerfs and the one targeted at Annie i think is fine too, DP assist the strong assist type in the game IMO so a nerf would be well receveid.
About the 2LP nerf tho, i hate it, skullgirls is very fast game where people are air dashing, double jumping and doing all sort of wild stuff in the air and sometimes they even have a assist in the back to help them approach you, so i dont see a reason to nerf AAs in this game, this is not a specifically thing to Annie tho as i would like to see more strong AA options in the game instead of having the ones that we have nerfed.
Parasoul:
The counter zoning buffs would be well received as she really struggles against zoning characters
5LP hitstun buff i dont think its a big deal but it would be nice to see it not be unsafe on hit at least
But overall i think Parasoul is fine as she is, probably one of the most balanced characters in the game right now.
Peacock:
I like the ideias of Lenny nerfs with all the extra hit and stuff but i think that just having it cost 2 bars would be a better nerf.
About the projectiles going alway on hit, i hate the ideia of just giving it lower scaling, we are playing a reset based game so if you hit her and she gets a combo on you after even if that combo is scaled to 20% you are still going to get put into her vortex, and be reseted to death after that.
About it going away with a delay, i think it shouldnt have a delay at all, she being able to walk you down just because she has a george close to her is REALLY STRONG, she already has some absurd neutral options with M Item, allowing her to just walk around a george without any risk is way too strong to stay in the game IMO.
M Item is also really strong maybe consider looking at some nerfs on it too
About the universal changes:
I like the ideia of global DP assist nerfs
The better nerf to two touches is probably to lower the DHC unscale, because as said in the post giving more health could be really dangerous when fighting against zoners
And nerf to max undizzy loops its a really good ideia, i dont have a strong opinion on wich one of the sugested changes would be better tho.
Hello, thank you for an excellent writeup! The only thing I'm gonna touch on is this. I imagine Lex's changelist was a tidy overview of potential tweaks. One big characteristic of Nom is which direction the head goes, and how you can influence that by crossing behind the opponent. Adjustment of Nom implies less time to run through, neutral jump, jHK H Gato for the side-switch. If that is the case, could we bundle it up with Lex's suggestion of standardizing which way the head goes instead of the current p1/p2 side variable?
Currently, we lean towards making changes that push things towards three touches from these conditions. This could manifest in a couple different ways:
• Small health increase, to keep combo damage consistent with past data.
• Reducing the DHC unscale value from 70% to something smaller. DHC unscale adjustments would perhaps require specific override rules for some supers to keep some supers viable, but we'd cross that bridge when we come to it.
• Other damage adjustments where needed.
Howdy, first time postin' long time playin, but just felt like throwing my two cents in for this
swapping from a two touch meta to a three touch meta would be drastic for every aspect of balancing, especially if the undizzy changes also go through. Does Beo have to pump the breaks after a kill to let undizzy drain before doing it again? Can he do it again? how does this effect ratio? What about characters that weren't two touching before would they be three touching with everyone else thus making their previously middling damage output considerably higher by comparison or would they be four touching now? Certain characters gain a huge amount of their relevancy from being DHC machines or damage engines. If you still need an extra reset on these setups it could result in them losing a huge part of their gameplan/relevancy or worse, becoming the most focal point of the meta because theyre the only ones meeting some absurd breakpoints.
I agree this is a change that should happen, losing a character in the first ten seconds of any game because of one slip and one wrong coing flip feels absolutely abysmal, but this one shift in design philosophy alone would have drastic influences on every aspect of the meta and doing this while also balancing characters would be an absolute clown fiesta.
The long awaited "Bypass Fix" (always creates a hitbox for at least one frame) is not just a QOL bug fix IMO, it's a straight up buff.
Considering it is a bug it should be fixed right away, any balance it affects should be tackled after. I don't think it is fair to keep it randomly not spawning a hitbox and having you look like a sitting falling duck and being punished because it might give Val more damage. If you played the character for a while you can tell more or less when it will fail but having to have your mind on that during high pressure matches is not fair.
• With all of the above in mind, I'd like to experiment with some nerfs to Orange Vial to "compensate".
I'd like to see that, Orange Vial is cool on paper but gameplans around that feels really dumb and considering it is almost always tied to excellebella makes it really really boring.
• To start, we'll probably try removing her life drain on shadows so that she's not hurting herself when executing her game plan, even just for resets. I don't think holding shadows in neutral without life drain is very powerful compared to every other zoning tool we have going on right now.
I'd prefer if the shadow self damage was red life only to see how that works out instead of removing it completely. And that would fit well with her since Fukua can easily bring other characters to point.
I think some things about Sekhmet could be made a little bit less frustrating to deal with, with more obvious windows to go for a hit on her (if you risk it) when playing neutral with her or dealing with her mix ups.
I don't like that, why is getting hit by tympanny my fault and not being able to deal with Sekhmet not my fault as well?
If Painwheel is receiving significant buffs to her point game, she will receive nerfs to her strengths as a "play me second for DHC damage" position by reducing Hatred Install damage and such.
I'm probably the only Painwheel player in the world that think she is fine, she already has a good point game, but considering how HI and her meter build works there is no reason to not have her mid and that is fine.
Throwing out another idea for a hatred guard change would to give her charged attacks the full charge properties without having to charge... although I like how it currently works because hitting them with some lovely hatred guard damage after tanking stuff for a while is fun.
• Making Lenny 2 bars and calling it a day is probably the simplest solution.
This super not being a lvl 2 is so wrong for me since I started playing this game, Lenny skews the risk reward so badly to Peacock's side, if you hit her you might get CH by Lenny while she will be hit with a scalled hit, when you finally have her in the corner and she brings it up you have to let her play because it is not worth the risk of getting a hit on her and then being blown up by Lenny.
Would love to see those unfinished sprites from the Art Compendium used for that purpose. I do agree that having Georges set up to save her is part of her gameplan, but she has so many instances of that that it feels overwhelming. Item drop forces you to give space to the zoner, Lenny as I just mentioned...
• Reducing the DHC unscale value from 70% to something smaller. DHC unscale adjustments would perhaps require specific override rules for some supers to keep some supers viable, but we'd cross that bridge when we come to it.
Building combos around that is fun so I hope it stays that way.
I think this one is the most overrated strong thing about MF, and they are so cool and weight specific I'd be sad if they were gonne. Ofc I agree that the max undizzy loops and damage are dumb so it is hard to vouch for that to stay.
So talking about the inevitable MF nerf, I'd like to see Headon being hit instead of headless, we see a lot of MF players evading Headless at all costs, so making headon the weaker side of the character and incentivizing players to use her mechanic would be more interesting instead of just playing the "Better Filia".
• Will be looking at legitimate QOL concerns, things like cMK[2] vacuuming a bit mentioned earlier makes sense, cHP not sliding under opponents and whiffing if they are slightly airborne, etc. Would like to focus on these things first, let's bang out as many of them as we can.
• If there is an up to date collection of these kinds of issues in one neat and tidy place that someone can share with me as well, that would be helpful!
I think these are all the valentine up to date legitimate QOL concerns.
-air bypass will sometimes whiff
-2MK whiffing on 2nd hit at max range
-lvl 5 doesn't reach corpses in the corner on some characters like Annie when val back is facing the corner
Pretty happy with the direction the game will be taking, so i'm excited to try the new changes when the patch comes out!
I do have some points that i would like to bring up to discussion:
[Robo Fortune]
We all know that Robo is an excellent team player with one of the best assists in the game and i agree with the beam assist getting toned down, but i also feel she is limited when she is on her own, making her somewhat of a polarizing character in this regard, which i personally don't think it's healthy.
With the overall damage of the game being reduced (Or characters having more health, whatever), one thing that would be interesting to try out is letting Robo dust jump her 5HK without having to spend heads, adding a bit more damage to the start of her combos, we barely see anyone using this option in her current state! The numbers could be adjusted if needed.
Another thing that i would like to try out is using heads (maybe 214LK?) to convert of her throw, or maybe spending it to amplify the throw reward, like forcing a hard knockdown or sliding knockdown like Peacock. Zoners shouldn't have huge reward of throws, but i feel hers could have a bit of improvement .
[Painwheel]
About the point Painwheel, i think she has 2 major weaknesses that needs to be analyzed:
1 - Awful meter gain, due to the Buer scaling she barely gets any meter and this is detrimental for her as a team player.
2 - Bad tag out routes. Painwheel has the least effective ways to tag out to another character. Since she doesn't have access to any sort of bounces or knockdown without being on Hatred Install, your only options are using a DHC (which she struggles because of poor meter gain), raw tag or an alpha counter to change characters, most of the time when Painwheel is on point i have a feeling that she's like a "brick" with no ways to get out.
There's also some clunky stuff with her hitboxes and frame data, like being unable to confirm of 2LK max range and her jHK being an inconsistent starter due to low hitstun, but those are not specific to her being a point and was probably already discussed before.
[Eliza]
Eliza being able to use Crimson Scourge as a DHC without needing taunt would be wonderful for the team variety in this game! Yes, it might have to be adjusted to fit better with the other DHC supers, but any incentive for team variety is a positive outcome in my view.
• Something(s) will change with Ice Shot, and perhaps a few other things for shots.
• JHK confirms may see a scaling penalty. • H Reload may see changes, but it may not! At the moment, I'm pretty happy with how H is being used, but I could see us changing around the order of where the bullets are loaded into the chamber such as [3 and 5], or[2 and 5], instead of the current [3 and 6].
• M Reload could be more interesting, so if there's an opportunity for control over your ammo choice, it would live here. I will mention that it's (obviously) very intentional Black Dahlia does not have access to: Reload + Pick shot type, Shoot shot type, Reload + Pick shot type, Shoot shot type...
• Empower shouldn't work on corpses and give you the buff.
J.hk scaling is unecessary, you already do 3 hits just to get confirm off it(2 from J.HK 1 from Lshot)
M reload is dull so i fully agree that it needs to do something else, hell give us full random chamber.
Also how about making the projectiles not go away on hit? Do the same thing you plan to do with peacock projectiles if it feels too strong.
This is a discussion had many pages back, but on the subject of fighting fire with fire, powerful options with powerful options, etc... I disagree with the sentiment that removing options or powerful things a character does is the wrong call. We have seen characters lose powerful tools time and time again with just about every balance patch in Skullgirls. I can think of a major thing a character lost at some point because it was deemed to powerful at some random given moment in the meta, and reflecting on those things in hindsight makes those decisions seem questionable - "did this character really need to lose this...?" is something we've been saying for 11 years now, haha. Often times even mid tier characters would have to receive some sort of nerf to trade for any buff to try and keep the scales balanced. You can argue that every powerful thing that is removed makes it harder to have a powerful answer to another powerful problem down the road, but in the past, removing some options that are considered too strong helped reduce the gap between power tiers more effectively (and in a more controlled way with predictable results) compared to say, giving everyone an option that is just as broken.
Some powerful tools or things that immediately come to mind that were nerfed in the past off the top of my head:
• Fukua old M Shadow
• Peacock's old Teleport + Assist (any assist, from anywhere)
• Fast Parasoul TK Tears with JLP
• Double's L Bomber > Puddle being safe on block
• Eliza's Horus trade / protection (bird insurance! remember that?)
• Fukua's H Drill > BFF combo, H Drill > Fireball Super safeness... too many Fukua things to list honestly!
• Filia jHK being overhead
• Cerebella's strike invuln Diamond Drop
I think a lot of these things could return all at the same time, and for the characters that aren't top 3 it would probably be "fine", but I don't think that's realistically happening. I can see a reality where characters are never nerfed and we're constantly making old characters character more and more broken, but in my opinion, that has never been the Skullgirls way so it's not how we plan to do things this go around - just getting that out of the way up front to set expectations.
SQUIGLY
• No urgent changes at this time, changes could arrive later or after another wave of discussion.
• I think she's a decent baseline for character strength. Has some powerful strengths, obvious weaknesses, she's very good or "there are better picks" tier depending on who you ask and who's playing her. Love it, personally!
• Could experiment with giving her access to uncharged versions of specials (while charged) if she performs QCB instead of QCF.
MS. FORTUNE
• I'm inclined to give a decent amount of weight to ideas for how to nerf Ms. Fortune from the Ms. Fortune players themselves, so many of these changes will be familiar to those who have kept up with the thread, and for those who experienced the short lived Ms. Fortune nerfs from the last patch before they were cut short.
• cLK head loops will be removed.
• jLK will see tweaks.
• Reduced confirm time from Nom seems reasonable.
• Worth trying changes to hit the head more reliably for all characters when it gets stuck behind them, in addition to perhaps locking it out for longer.
• Making her supers easier to punish when they end near the head is a good suggestion.
• She may need targeted damage nerfs on top of any other global changes we may experiment with.
• I'd like to continue the previous experiment of making her easier to hit when she's up backing away from you, but with a new approach.
• Something about her plethora of very effective defensive options will probably be adjusted, be it Fiber, Headroll, or both.
• For Fiber, letting Ms. Fortune get thrown for attempting it by moving it to strike invuln feels like the right call here. For how fast she can slip away if you're not jumping in front of her, more options to call out Fiber in neutral (with or without an assist backing it, which makes it especially difficult to counter) would be ideal. Making it more unsafe on block so the slower characters can get into position to punish it as suggested seems reasonable too. We'll see where everything shakes out with her defensive options and we're still discussing internally.
• On the often mentioned topic of "just make the head not mess up my combos please"...
→ There are multiple ways that hitting pet characters can work on other fighting games, and they come with flaws.
→ Style 1: You hit Ms. Fortune's head, go into hitpause, you keep your active hitbox the entire time, but now your button has 12+ active frames. In games with this implementation (Arcsys), you'll see someone strike a pet character with a heavy, then the opponent dashes in super late and gets hit by the 20th active frame on a heavy normal and explodes for it. I don't think we'll be doing this.
→ Style 2: You hit Ms. Fortune's head, you don't go into hitpause and your active frames aren't extended NOR are they cut short. Only the pet experiences the properties of a hit making contact. Now characters can rapid fire cLP on the head which looks very jank and deals tons of damage very quickly, since they aren't going into hitpause. This especially doesn't work for Ms. Fortune herself, as now when she suki cancels off her own head with sHK she experiences no hitpause when doing so. Boy, if you thought cLK loops were bad now...
→ Style 3: Little Eddie, Zappa's dog, Dizzy's fish, lol.
→ Style ?: If there are other more elegant ways to handle this, I have no qualms admitting I'm unfamiliar with them.
→ None of these styles really account for a projectile hitting the head earlier than the body and causing it to end the hit early, and this phenomenon happens all the time during happy birthday combos that involve projectiles. (EX: sHP sHP x Napalm Shot will almost always drop one character out)
→ The correct "make the head not mess up my combos" implementation is subjective, and they all have different problems. I am going to infer that the way it works now is the desired implementation during her creation, and the least problematic of all implementations - no? Spot fixing issues like Beowulf cMK not working correctly when the head nearby however is doable, so I can look at those!
PEACOCK
• Look at SoiD losing its hitbox and / or having a delay on dropping post flash as mentioned.
• Something to give players a bit more time to live and room to try thingswhen dealing with her zoning at fullscreen is worth discussing IMO. I'd like to see players have more time to experiment and use their character specific tools to try and get in on her without taking over 2000 damage every time they bump into a projectile that combos into another one following behind it. This damage adds up fast and makes it feel like you only have a handful of attempts to get in before you lose the character - I don't think that feeling will change drastically, but perhaps it's worth tweaking some things about this. Robo-Fortune lost CH damage bonus damage on Beams for a similar reason many moons ago, and I've been thinking about the same for Peacock. Level 1 item drop on CH (often sneaking above and interrupting something you're trying) hits for a whopping 1275. Extra metergain for the defender and/or damage scaling on projectile starters would give players access to more super options to try and make a play with. I'm mentioning all of this in the spirit of having her fullscreen presence be more two player than it is now, while still keeping the options she has access to more or less the same. Eager to hear other perspectives.
"Lenny needs nerfs and/or should be 2 bars"
• Making Lenny 2 bars and calling it a day is probably the simplest solution.
• There are other things that I think could be explored instead while still keeping it a one bar super:
→ No CH damage bonus.
→ Significantly less damage.
→ Peacock builds zero meter while it's out, down from 30% (?) or whatever the current penalty is.
→ Lenny has a hit when placed, and this hit can be blocked making M Bang x Lenny unsafe. (M Bang x Lenny will be unsafe as one of the experiments for her, this change aside. One bar safe on block reversals were removed for Double and Fukua, Peacock should really not be keeping it as a zoner.)
→ The hit from Lenny could also be implemented to remove the happy birthday L Bang x Lenny into teleport 50/50, completely safe, guess-for-your-assist-character's-life mix up, which I think is very strongand worth looking at.
"Bombs should go away when Peacock is hit"
• Sure, let's talk about that. Bombs sticking around so they can trade favorably with opponents in defensive situations feels like a pretty big part of her kit. It may be too strong of a perk for her to have given how quick and slippery she is, and how fast she can get bombs out.
• There are two things I'd prefer to try first before "bombs go away on hit", instead:
→ Bombs go away on hit, but only after a delay. Using M or H to trade against a dash in or jump in would still be viable, but if you just called the bomb mere frames before getting hit, it would explode before it reaches her. Standing inside of L George and playing footsies as you walk backwards with him would still be viable, but him walking across the entire screen to interrupt would not be, etc. You can envision how that would work hopefully.
→ Bombs have atrocious damage scaling applied if they hit the opponent after Peacock goes into hitstun. This experiment was tried briefly before, but this would be a more aggressive version, maybe even scaling down to 20%. Peacock would very much be incentivized to reset ASAP or knock the opponent away, lest she donates tons of meter to the opponent for a small amount of damage in return.
→ Could do weaker versions of both of these ideas, but combined. FUKUA
• I'm not 100% convinced Fukua is fine as is, and that she has enough strengths to warrant getting picked over many other characters right now. • To start, we'll probably try removing her life drain on shadows so that she's not hurting herself when executing her game plan, even just for resets. I don't think holding shadows in neutral without life drain is very powerful compared to every other zoning tool we have going on right now. ROBO-FORTUNE
• We'll continue the H Beam nerf experiments where we left off last time, something about that move will be toned down I expect.
• Magnet doesn't need to be rising unblockable on DHC when someone tries to bait your super with a jump.
• Not 100% Robo-Fortune related, but I think we'll try bringing the minimum crouching height down to Dahlia's current crouching height. This means all characters can duck under H Beam.
• There may be some other adjustments that are TBD. ANNIE
• Worth reading the "JUST BUFF EVERYONE" and "TEAM BUILDING, CHARACTER CHOICE, AND GLUE CHARACTERS" sections at the top of my post again. I expect some players will disagree with us and ask for everyone to be as strong as Annie, but I think we're just going to have to respectfully disagree and figure out a way to move forward with some tough calls.
• Star Power (Install) is expected to see a full rework, with higher meter cost up front to activate it like a normal super. The goal will be to make the state more fun to be in, more fun to fight against, with a much shorter duration. She could end up strictly more powerful than before while in install, but with it costing more meter and lasting for a shorter amount of time I think it should be alright, and anything is more fun to fight against than stars are currently!
→ Stars will likely be retired on many normals and must be summoned explicitly on select attacks in a different ways.
→ We'll experiment with powered up special moves much like you see in Skullgirls Mobile during her install.
→ I'd like to try giving her a RC that drains a lot of her remaining power.
→ Some attacks may get cooler properties.
→ Think Dragon Install / HoS instead of Dark Phoenix.
• We'll try having Crescent Cut be less effective when thrown out carelessly up close. Currently it reaches the ability to trade extremely fast.
• There will probably be some tweaks to her normals (frame data and/or hitboxes)
• Destruction Pillar assist will likely see increased landing recovery, and have Annie land in front of the character who blocked her more often instead of landing safely behind them. These changes are to make the aftermath and risk of a blocked DP assist call more in line with other assists.
• cLP may get some slight nerfs.
• Depending on how some of the global experiments shared way above go, she may receive the right amount of toning down to fall in line with other characters without many other changes. (Reduced two touch potential, DHC unscale changes hurting her Meteor Strike damage in the corner, her throw loops at max Undizzy, etc.)
Hi! I made a new account just to reply to this post, so expect terrible smartphone formatting and typos. I chopped out everything I have no input on from the reply post.
First and foremost, I am glad you are not just buffing everyone up to Annie's level. Characters should not be able to do literally everything and that character can do literally everything.
That said, I think making Squigly the power baseline is an overcorrection in the other direction. I think making Peacock the power baseline, or just under her current power level, would be better, with Pea being a character that is clearly better than most of the cast while clearly worse than both Fortunes and Annie. That would mean buffing about 2/3 of the cast, especially Fukua, making minor pea adjustments, heavily nerfing annie and fortune, and slightly hitting robo. Now for specifics.
FORTUNE
I like almost everything I'm reading here. These nerfs seem a bit heavy handed, which I'm not a fan of, but none of them are outright bad ideas. I would like to see the nerfs go in especially on damage and scaling. Loving everything I read on how the head interacts with combos. Could try adjusting how much the head moves when hit rather than adjusting the hitstun.
PEACOCK
I must acknowledge my bias here as a solo pea player but I'm not gonna lie to you, I hate most of what I'm reading here. Not because they're nerfs, mind you (see above for my thoughts on that) but because these changes just are not good in my opinion. In no particular order:
-I like m bang -> lenny getting gutted. The rationale on frame 1 reversals is good here.
-If you want to adjust the time you have to experiment vs the zoning, the way you do that is by toning down the chip damage on george and argus. I don't dislike adjusting level 1 item drop damage slightly but overall this is the IMO the clear best way to change this, not that this needs a change frankly.
-SoiD IMO does not need a change.
-I hate the idea of Lenny going to 2 bars. If you asked me to come up with a joke suggestion for a peacock change this would be in my answer. If you think peacock gets lenny way too easily, turning down her metergain is far and away the better way to fix that. Lenny is her best super but that does not mean it should be a level 2.
-I like the Lenny changes involving no CH damage bonus, reduced damage, and no metergain. I would choose 2 of these and scrap 1 as well as implementing the hitbox. Alternatively, choose 1, scrap 2, and tone down argus damage or chip.
-no opinion on the happy birthday
Onto the bomb discussion! I saw 3 propositions here:
-Bombs go away after a delay.
them interrupting with a delay is what made them interesting and a core part of her design. I don't think players' refusal to play around a clear lingering hazard on the ground that you can see easily needs rewarding. This solution is terrible IMO.
-Extreme damage scaling if the bomb connects while Peacock is in hitstun.
Love it, implement this yesterday. Fantastic.
-A combo of the two.
One of the options is clearly better than the other. Just scrap the bad one.
Again though, I'd like to see the top 3 menace characters being brought down to pea and pretty much the rest of the cast save peacock and maybe Band getting buffs. If that can't happen, then this is my take on the proposed changes. Mind you, if that can happen, you can still implement the proposed changes if you then tweak other things.
ROBO
I like what I'm reading. LOVE the cast wide crouch changes. I like to see nerfs to Robo being relatively light handed. I don't think she's that problematic outside of beam assist. That said, this character is already the better zoner between her and pea and it very much seems like she is getting the much lighter nerfs of the two. Something to consider.
FUKUA
Like what I'm seeing. I think she could also get some flat damage buffs on either fireball or some normals.
ANNIE
Biggest problem character in the cast in my opinion. Love what I'm seeing, especially the star comparisons to Dark Phoenix.
Liam specifically said the two touch changes would be addressing the very meter positive hyper optimal stuff that let's you two touch next character with minimal ud drain, there was nothing really stated (besides dhc upscale talk) about hitting "traditional " two touches specifically
Since beo and fortune and umby and BRASS ASSIST are the main culprits there id imagine those would be getting more guided changes than overall system changes past full UD dmg
• Plenty of chatter about Beowulf internally - just to lay it all out on the table transparently, here's where we're at...
• Even with changes to Beowulf in previous patches, he's still at his most powerful when he's building hype using resource building assists such as A-Train, then spending it to two touch off of his oki, or TOD you even if he's saved up enough meter. Attempting to move Beowulf away from this gameplan is met with some amount of friction, as Beowulf A-Train players will be frustrated at having the most effective strategy for the character removed. As a result, it feels very difficult to change anything about him and allow for more viable playstyles, so we're at a bit of a logjam here.
• The way Beowulf fundamentally engages with hype and builds hype would likely have to be reworked to let him be played freely in different positions with flexible team compositions. For some patches closer to his release I'll remind you that Beowulf couldn't build three hype with taunt, and had less ways to dump a ton of hype on EX moves during a combo, since many EX finishers didn't regrab - he may have been worse, but he wasn't shackled to resource assists for doing a ton of damage.
• Summary: For as long as Beowulf remains a character that wants to taunt in the middle of a combo with an assist call (due to how hype building works), he will probably pilot the same as before. I expect him to lose his effective 0 bar two touches (!) in some of the global two touch changes mentioned way above, so this may be our collective best shot to give him different ways to be played. If the Beowulf + A-Train players want him to stay with the same gameplan, with the same assist dependencies, we'll have to figure that out too. Thoughts welcome!
I think limiting hype usage to once per combo (I.E Press Slam, regrab, then you pick to headbutt or knee,) could work to reduce the get 3 hype and then use it instantly style of beotrain we're at right now. Doing this with some buff to his neutral (See what other people said about chair on 5hk among other changes) coupled with a few more intuitive ways to get hype mid combo could make his game plan be less reliant on hype building assists while still letting him keep his current gameplan.
Cross posting a Discord response here about the Bypass buff, because I want to keep things out of Discord when possible.
Caio Lugon said:
I would very much like to hear more about that from @Liam himself because I really can't visualize this being a problem at all. From my experience labbing val fitting in bypass was never an issue, to the point that even if you increase the size of the hitbox to obviously unreasonable and comically large sizes I don't think her damage would have much of an increase compared to her current optimal routing, especially when assists are involved
Giving a character new ways to hit with a move is always an unknown, a tiny hitbox adjustment on any move even can lead to new tech, routes, resets, etc.
It only takes 3 seconds to discover new ways to hit with Bypass that didn't work before, I'm erring on the side of caution when I imagine what her corner routes could be with that kind of consistency and no need to care about actually hitting the target with her dash anymore, she can whiff it and still hit them.
hello Liam, could it be possible the chair hits the opponent if beowulf gets a hit after calling for it or atleast that projectils that hits Beo doesnt affect the hit of the chair?? I mean, it cost 3 lvls of hype :c
Hello, guidemaker and shitter tourney player here and i wanna give my thoughts on the patch. im basically only commenting on things i have something to say about and while i will talk about balance, i mostly value whats FUN for both me and my opponent. big fan of more chance to play as well as letting chars keep what they have while nerfing problematic aspects in ways that doesnt kill the fun while also being managable for the opponent dealing with it. also for reference my team is Pea (air show) Squig (DnB) Annie (VOLCANIC VIPER). i also play a lil band and a lil fillia
I'd love to get a read of the room on how we're all feeling about two touch teams from round start. Specifically dash up cLK or overhead, then one mix up into death from round start conditions and spacing, but also for the next character arriving on incoming when teams have ~1.5 bars and can build another one easily for the DHC unscale in the corner.
Currently, we lean towards making changes that push things towards three touches from these conditions. This could manifest in a couple different ways:
• Small health increase, to keep combo damage consistent with past data.
• Reducing the DHC unscale value from 70% to something smaller. DHC unscale adjustments would perhaps require specific override rules for some supers to keep some supers viable, but we'd cross that bridge when we come to it.
• Other damage adjustments where needed.
Note that slippery zoners may need a bit of extra attention here to make sure that needing to touch Peacock or Robo-Fortune one more time to kill them isn't a huge buff. Other changes might be needed after this too! A simple goal, but the changes can be tricky to get right depending on how it shakes out.
So that's how we're feeling at least, how about others? Some people preferred TODs from vanilla more and didn't like the addition of Undizzy, so I expect that will extend again to anything that makes the game require more touches to kill. We've seen health increases and more mechanics added in the past to keep things going back and forth and generally "two player", so this feels like a recurring theme on brand for patches.
Ok so i really despise the 2 touch meta we have found ourselves in, i thnk the mix up in this game is really strong (obviously) and while i do think that characters like umby or beo deserve to be rewared for getting in, i think the defender should get an extra opportunity to guess on instant high low throw. not to mention the way chars like annie and robo can give other char 2 touches for 2 bars. its not fun getting taged roundstart, into a 3 way guess, into ur point is dead and u have to deal with headless fortune on incomming. im honestly down for a health increase and slight damage nerfs on high damage characters and maybe damage buffs for lower damage characters, i dont want fukua players going for an 8 touch to kill me.
We've seen changes to max Undizzy start sequences in the past and I think we'll be seeing changes to them again. If you're starting a combo on a character that is at max Undizzy, our leaning is to crank up the punishment for doing so even more. Few things could be done here:
Keep in mind, the following changes would occur when starting a combo while the Undizzy bar is full, but not when starting a combo below max Undizzy, then maxing it out later in the combo.
• Applying even harsher combo scaling. It's 50% right now, it could be as low as 20%! Even lower scaling also means more meter for the defender due to inverse meter scaling.
• Immediately starting combo stages at stage 3. Pretty bold, but it would certainly move the needle and force people to back off.
• Giving players access to super gold bursts (the fully invuln one, that keeps all of your Undizzy) to escape air throw burst bait loops when some conditions are met.
• Potentially having said super gold burst (the one that keeps Undizzy... this needs a name... "Super Gold Burst" perhaps?) put the victim into a sliding knockdown so that you can dash over and be plus as they wake up. Guessing correctly on these max Undizzy loops only to knock a zoner away and have them immediately set up projectiles is pretty rough, this would flip the advantage and deter these high Undizzy loops as intended by the mechanic originally.
so for this one i want to say that i like the idea of applying a harder damage scaling and parts of the super gold burst idea. my only problem with the super gold burst is it feels like the offender is being PUNISHED for winning which never really feels good. thats only if it were to give a sliding KD. i think giving the defender more options in that situation is good, but i think the person who got the hit and is looping them in max undizzy should still b in the driver seat. i think taking it away entirely is a little bit lame but if this were gone and all these changes were implemented, it wouldn't b the end of the world and i would understand. maybe make the super burst work like gear bursts so if i block it i can punish??? but that also sounds wack and not very SG so idk
There's been some discussion about increasing the assist cooldown when your assist leaves, but I think the fast speed of assist calls is pretty integral to the feeling of Skullgirls. Assist lockout cooldown (when an assist is actually hit) could be increased as an experiment, but I'd want to distinguish between projectile hits and physical hits so that zoners aren't locking your assist out even longer when you're getting walled out.
Different topic: Assist hits that start a combo set damage scaling at 66% for reduced reward, but counter hit assist hits start at 90% on top of the bonus CH damage from the hit itself. I think DP assists are ignoring the forced scaling and proration, since they are almost always hitting for bonus CH damage and setting scaling at 90%. Given how strong these kind of assists are, I think we will experiment with assists always scaling to 66%, CH or not. Assists themselves getting counter called and counter hit should probably still scale to 90% instead of 50%. Since damage scaling is set per victim this hopefully shouldn't be too tricky to take into account.
as an annie dp assist user (abuser) i actually dont think these changes are that unreasonable, i just think that DP assists arent as big of a problem as everyone makes them out to be and i think the annie nerf later is good enough without the scaling decrease. maybe make dp assists scale to 75% instead bc i still want people to feel the error of their actions and if they get hit MASHING on my dp assists, 9/10 its bc they were overextend on their pressure when i get a land cancel DP call off or PBGC dp call. i also think beam and brass are way more of a problem and with my team my best recourse is to play up close but with a lot of respect and i just want my opponents to have the same for me. but maybe im biased, my assist macro is more worn then the strings of the guitar ive owned for the past decade.
• No urgent changes at this time, changes could arrive later or after another wave of discussion.
• I think she's a decent baseline for character strength. Has some powerful strengths, obvious weaknesses, she's very good or "there are better picks" tier depending on who you ask and who's playing her. Love it, personally!
• Could experiment with giving her access to uncharged versions of specials (while charged) if she performs QCB instead of QCF.
agree she needs nothing but that change sounds like fun i would take it. i think squigly is what SG char should b
• Aware of the discussion about his defensive options many pages back. Parry timing could be adjusted, but adjusting parry timing won't have much impact on his defensive option selects... Sure they'll be some % harder to pull off, but the functionality will be the same.
• Timpany checks a ton of boxes, I get it: Massive hitbox, post flash unblockable, difficult to punish, and more. However if you are running into it face first on his incoming that's your fault imo, especially when easy set ups exist to meaty the blind spot while avoiding the drums... That said, I'm not opposed to making it easier to punish for the slower characters or adjusting something else about it even still.
i thnk band is mostly fine, but yea i wish it was easier to punish timpany since most bands (myself included) mash dp/SSJ after cuz we know how hard it is to punish, which feels wack on a reversal i blocked and punished. this feels particularly bad on squigly since i almost always spend a bar on SBO to punish cuz she can b a bit slow to get there at certain spots
• I think some things about Sekhmet could be made a little bit less frustrating to deal with, with more obvious windows to go for a hit on her (if you risk it) when playing neutral with her or dealing with her mix ups.
• Sekhmet backflip likely won't be allowed if the point blocks it even if it hits an assist, just like how Upperkhat and Fiber work, for consistency.
• Crimson Scourge shouldn't work on dead characters.
• Maybe Throne can try red bounce instead of blue bounce.
• Crimson Scourge as an Eliza super (not a Sekhmet super) after Eliza taunts as suggested elsewhere could be a fun experiment. It would let her DHC into it after taunting, but not from round start if she's on second.
tbh i think backflip if it hits an assist is fine but yea dealing with skelton vs a good player is really not fun. its just a test of patience to see if u can block it out and try to wait for them to ever extend with H. not fun or dynamic as the defender, but im glad u r not just gutting it. that taunt idea sounds awesome plz do it
• I'm inclined to give a decent amount of weight to ideas for how to nerf Ms. Fortune from the Ms. Fortune players themselves, so many of these changes will be familiar to those who have kept up with the thread, and for those who experienced the short lived Ms. Fortune nerfs from the last patch before they were cut short.
• cLK head loops will be removed.
• jLK will see tweaks.
• Reduced confirm time from Nom seems reasonable.
• Worth trying changes to hit the head more reliably for all characters when it gets stuck behind them, in addition to perhaps locking it out for longer.
• Making her supers easier to punish when they end near the head is a good suggestion.
• She may need targeted damage nerfs on top of any other global changes we may experiment with.
• I'd like to continue the previous experiment of making her easier to hit when she's up backing away from you, but with a new approach.
• Something about her plethora of very effective defensive options will probably be adjusted, be it Fiber, Headroll, or both.
• For Fiber, letting Ms. Fortune get thrown for attempting it by moving it to strike invuln feels like the right call here. For how fast she can slip away if you're not jumping in front of her, more options to call out Fiber in neutral (with or without an assist backing it, which makes it especially difficult to counter) would be ideal. Making it more unsafe on block so the slower characters can get into position to punish it as suggested seems reasonable too. We'll see where everything shakes out with her defensive options and we're still discussing internally.
yes to everything here. i think one of my biggest problems with jLK is that u CANT ANTI AIR IT point blank. if im pea solo and i read they will do IAD button on their pressure, the only thing i can really do is jump air throw and pray im perfect on it cuz otherwise i get hit, 2lk doesnt work and thats really frustrating, especially in the corner. on top of that i cant even land cancel it cuz 214K series jails me to the ground and keeps her plus. i thnk her damage is the real problem with the catgirls of the stars team. im honestly down with her building a lot of meter, especially since she has to hit u to do it, but killing u of a 2 touch with her mix up game is kinda messed up. im a fortune hater tho so i want her to 4 touch like fukua or robo, she will still b broken. yea when the head is behind it really sucks to deal with for most char, but tbh they usually have to outplay u to put you in that position in the first place so i hope u dont go too overboard with it. and plz lemme punish h fiber with pea and squig easier, as it is now even when i land cancel it can b hard without spending a bar
→ Style 1: You hit Ms. Fortune's head, go into hitpause, you keep your active hitbox the entire time, but now your button has 12+ active frames. In games with this implementation (Arcsys), you'll see someone strike a pet character with a heavy, then the opponent dashes in super late and gets hit by the 20th active frame on a heavy normal and explodes for it. I don't think we'll be doing this.
U COWARD LET ANNIE 2MP AND SQUIGLY 2LK LAST FOR 89 FRAMES
• Look at SoiD losing its hitbox and / or having a delay on dropping post flash as mentioned.
• Something to give players a bit more time to live and room to try thingswhen dealing with her zoning at fullscreen is worth discussing IMO. I'd like to see players have more time to experiment and use their character specific tools to try and get in on her without taking over 2000 damage every time they bump into a projectile that combos into another one following behind it. This damage adds up fast and makes it feel like you only have a handful of attempts to get in before you lose the character - I don't think that feeling will change drastically, but perhaps it's worth tweaking some things about this. Robo-Fortune lost CH damage bonus damage on Beams for a similar reason many moons ago, and I've been thinking about the same for Peacock. Level 1 item drop on CH (often sneaking above and interrupting something you're trying) hits for a whopping 1275. Extra metergain for the defender and/or damage scaling on projectile starters would give players access to more super options to try and make a play with. I'm mentioning all of this in the spirit of having her fullscreen presence be more two player than it is now, while still keeping the options she has access to more or less the same. Eager to hear other perspectives.
yea shadow lvl lenny is funny, but she dont need it. i think it would be an interesting idea to make any subsequent projectile in a projectile only combo severely scale. so like 5HP does full damage then like an h George would deal 70% scaling and the l George moving across the ground would do like 50% scaling, etc. maybe not that harsh that quick but something like that. this could also extend to argus full screen so if it took u like 4 projectiles to confirm the hit rahter then 5hp into 236hp into argus, u would b punished with harsher argus scaling. i think 236hp should b treated as 1 projectile tho and maybe 5hp shouldn't count since its a normal and doesn't chip.
"Lenny needs nerfs and/or should be 2 bars"
• Making Lenny 2 bars and calling it a day is probably the simplest solution.
• There are other things that I think could be explored instead while still keeping it a one bar super:
→ No CH damage bonus.
→ Significantly less damage.
→ Peacock builds zero meter while it's out, down from 30% (?) or whatever the current penalty is.
→ Lenny has a hit when placed, and this hit can be blocked making M Bang x Lenny unsafe. (M Bang x Lenny will be unsafe as one of the experiments for her, this change aside. One bar safe on block reversals were removed for Double and Fukua, Peacock should really not be keeping it as a zoner.)
→ The hit from Lenny could also be implemented to remove the happy birthday L Bang x Lenny into teleport 50/50, completely safe, guess-for-your-assist-character's-life mix up, which I think is very strongand worth looking at.
okok ik making lenny 2 bars would b the easiest way to do it but i REALLY would like to not have that. i think lenny is really fun to use for neutral and mix up so i would much rather take damage and meter build nerfs then having it b relegated to a lvl 2. so yea make it deal less damage, take away CH damage (that is wack anyways) make pea build 0 meter while its out, and make it deal like 25% to assists in all instances. i think if i do the lenny mix up on a hppy birthday the assist should b at around half HP, NOT DEAD. i think that mbang lenny should b more unsafe then it is but tbh i also think people are lazy most of the time and dont look up proper counter play to situations like this. although side note, one time i saw Iso post a tod on someone doing mbang lenny, and then that night in bracket i did mbang lenny to him but he was slightly misspaced, so he missed the punished and i did Mbang again and won the game off of it. so yea maybe make it -16 instead of -10 to standardize it with mbang frame data
"Bombs should go away when Peacock is hit"
• Sure, let's talk about that. Bombs sticking around so they can trade favorably with opponents in defensive situations feels like a pretty big part of her kit. It may be too strong of a perk for her to have given how quick and slippery she is, and how fast she can get bombs out.
• There are two things I'd prefer to try first before "bombs go away on hit", instead:
→ Bombs go away on hit, but only after a delay. Using M or H to trade against a dash in or jump in would still be viable, but if you just called the bomb mere frames before getting hit, it would explode before it reaches her. Standing inside of L George and playing footsies as you walk backwards with him would still be viable, but him walking across the entire screen to interrupt would not be, etc. You can envision how that would work hopefully.
→ Bombs have atrocious damage scaling applied if they hit the opponent after Peacock goes into hitstun. This experiment was tried briefly before, but this would be a more aggressive version, maybe even scaling down to 20%. Peacock would very much be incentivized to reset ASAP or knock the opponent away, lest she donates tons of meter to the opponent for a small amount of damage in return.
→ Could do weaker versions of both of these ideas, but combined.
i definitely like the first idea more but the 2nd one could work too. i think that george interupting the combo cuz he walked across the entire stage is kinda lame and unfun, but when im playing with george inside me its kinda woke. usually if i in the sitiuation of playing inside an L george its bc i did H teleport at somepoint and to me that usually takes a read on someone's intentions to get into that situation. i appreciate you trying these pea change without just removing the mechanic raw, i think theres a lot of counterplay to georges in general that u see in high level play but low and mid level players tend to not dont tend to implement (making aerial routes to go around george or calling asssists at key parts of a combo, etc)
• If Painwheel is receiving significant buffs to her point game, she will receive nerfs to her strengths as a "play me second for DHC damage" position by reducing Hatred Install damage and such.
• I think the "Nail Storage" idea (FC from Nails to save the charge percentage for later) sounds really fun actually! However currently each nail adds Undizzy separately, so using this in combos wouldn't be possible without some minor engine changes.
• Some amount of "QOL" (buffs) to hitboxes and frame data here and there as often brought up can be looked at for her. • HATRED GUARD DISCUSSION
→ I don't disagree, Hatred Guard could probably be more interesting if Painwheel had access to something new and fun after using the mechanic properly instead of just dishing some bonus CH damage back ASAP, although that simple mechanic in itself is still powerful, especially post bug fix where it properly returns damage to assist and point on the same hit. She can sometimes have a reason to try and armor a bunch of single hitting assist calls in neutral so that she can get in and dish it back with a move that converts stored damage well, since there are different return values of stored damage depending on the move that connects, but it doesn't go too much further than that.
→ This is off the cuff and probably even irresponsible to just throw out there, but something like "aftering armoring some number of hit(s), her next Buer is the boosted installed version" could be pretty fun and gives her a reason to fish for armor more often, and dissuades opponents from feeding her easy to armor assist calls for a bit of counter play.
i am not a pw player but i think she deserves some QOL just so her combos aren't so strict and frustrating. that player base deserves a functioning character even if she eats a bunch of nerfs in other area's
• Will be looking at legitimate QOL concerns, things like cMK[2] vacuuming a bit mentioned earlier makes sense, cHP not sliding under opponents and whiffing if they are slightly airborne, etc. Would like to focus on these things first, let's bang out as many of them as we can.
• If there is an up to date collection of these kinds of issues in one neat and tidy place that someone can share with me as well, that would be helpful!
• The long awaited "Bypass Fix" (always creates a hitbox for at least one frame) is not just a QOL bug fix IMO, it's a straight up buff. I think it's going to allow for new combos that were otherwise impossible before, and may boost her corner damage significantly which could need more changes depending on how extreme it is. I'm alright with trying this for the move to be consistent, but I think it's a large change.
• With all of the above in mind, I'd like to experiment with some nerfs to Orange Vial to "compensate".
same sentiment as above, but b a bit more careful consider how strong she currently is. i just dont think inconsistent combo's are fun for anyone.
• No urgent changes at this time, changes could arrive later or after another wave of discussion.
• May be looking at buffing her counter-zoning via [M] and [H] Egret, and some other minor improvements here and there based on some comments in the thread.
• As for buffing sLP hitstun, I'm a bit worried it might give her access to better confirms from that tipper range where she's just supposed to harass you into a Napalm Shot without a combo. That said, it probably wouldn't be a huge deal if she could do more from that range since it's her area of strength.
• Openly acknowledging that I'm biased towards always leaving Parasoul alone, so I appreciate the feedback for her. More perspectives are always welcome especially if players are agreeing on things that could make her life easier. I've got my own thoughts like making it a bit harder to jump out of her overhead strings, and reducing her susceptibility to PBGC, but I'm always weary of buffing her without trade off.
i mean TBH if she took 5LP buff its not the end of the world, and its p weird that she doesnt get full combo at max range when pea gets some true gameshark confirms at ranges that are even further away thanks to sweep l george. plus most players have assists that give her good confirms in those spots anyways so her having it solo isnt the worst. tbh i dont think her counter zoning needs anything i think its fine and a good para player is really scary to zone
• I'm not 100% convinced Fukua is fine as is, and that she has enough strengths to warrant getting picked over many other characters right now. • To start, we'll probably try removing her life drain on shadows so that she's not hurting herself when executing her game plan, even just for resets. I don't think holding shadows in neutral without life drain is very powerful compared to every other zoning tool we have going on right now.
i literally have this written down for a post on youtube but yea, its weird that she has to pay life for shadows when SoID exists and is free. i think this change alone will open up a lot of avenues in mix up and neutral for this char so im all for it
• Plenty of chatter about Beowulf internally - just to lay it all out on the table transparently, here's where we're at...
• Even with changes to Beowulf in previous patches, he's still at his most powerful when he's building hype using resource building assists such as A-Train, then spending it to two touch off of his oki, or TOD you even if he's saved up enough meter. Attempting to move Beowulf away from this gameplan is met with some amount of friction, as Beowulf A-Train players will be frustrated at having the most effective strategy for the character removed. As a result, it feels very difficult to change anything about him and allow for more viable playstyles, so we're at a bit of a logjam here.
• The way Beowulf fundamentally engages with hype and builds hype would likely have to be reworked to let him be played freely in different positions with flexible team compositions. For some patches closer to his release I'll remind you that Beowulf couldn't build three hype with taunt, and had less ways to dump a ton of hype on EX moves during a combo, since many EX finishers didn't regrab - he may have been worse, but he wasn't shackled to resource assists for doing a ton of damage.
• Summary: For as long as Beowulf remains a character that wants to taunt in the middle of a combo with an assist call (due to how hype building works), he will probably pilot the same as before. I expect him to lose his effective 0 bar two touches (!) in some of the global two touch changes mentioned way above, so this may be our collective best shot to give him different ways to be played. If the Beowulf + A-Train players want him to stay with the same gameplan, with the same assist dependencies, we'll have to figure that out too. Thoughts welcome!
i hate the way beo plays currently but beo mains love it so leaving him alone for the most part is the right call
• We'll continue the H Beam nerf experiments where we left off last time, something about that move will be toned down I expect.
• Magnet doesn't need to be rising unblockable on DHC when someone tries to bait your super with a jump.
• Not 100% Robo-Fortune related, but I think we'll try bringing the minimum crouching height down to Dahlia's current crouching height. This means all characters can duck under H Beam.
• There may be some other adjustments that are TBD.
i think all character other than band should b able to crouch h beam. the magnet dhc change is really good. on point tho i think the char is really cool and interesting, its just maybe she provides too much value on a team
• At the moment, we are still discussing Umbrella and need more time before we have anything meaningful to share here. I'd rather get this post out instead of holding it up until we've had a chance to do that. Sorry!
i think that umby isnt broken, its just she's really linear as is. i think maybe some of her power budget should b taken away from rav and put into overstuffed. make her a character thats more dynamic in more playstyle cuz as is the gameplan is just "get in rav, mash broken buttons (2mp 2lp jmp, etc) and b plus". maybe to help this make it so her level 3 can add pips to rav OR overstuffed (214 LP MP gives pips to rav and 214 MP HP gives pips to overstuff). this would further incentivize players think about overstuffed and give umby players more decisions to make based on match up and preference. i think she has potential to b the most interesting char in the game and im curious to see what road you go down. hopefully we can get a post on her when u decide what ur gameplan is internally
• Worth reading the "JUST BUFF EVERYONE" and "TEAM BUILDING, CHARACTER CHOICE, AND GLUE CHARACTERS" sections at the top of my post again. I expect some players will disagree with us and ask for everyone to be as strong as Annie, but I think we're just going to have to respectfully disagree and figure out a way to move forward with some tough calls.
• Star Power (Install) is expected to see a full rework, with higher meter cost up front to activate it like a normal super. The goal will be to make the state more fun to be in, more fun to fight against, with a much shorter duration. She could end up strictly more powerful than before while in install, but with it costing more meter and lasting for a shorter amount of time I think it should be alright, and anything is more fun to fight against than stars are currently!
→ Stars will likely be retired on many normals and must be summoned explicitly on select attacks in a different ways.
→ We'll experiment with powered up special moves much like you see in Skullgirls Mobile during her install.
→ I'd like to try giving her a RC that drains a lot of her remaining power.
→ Some attacks may get cooler properties.
→ Think Dragon Install / HoS instead of Dark Phoenix.
• We'll try having Crescent Cut be less effective when thrown out carelessly up close. Currently it reaches the ability to trade extremely fast.
• There will probably be some tweaks to her normals (frame data and/or hitboxes)
• Destruction Pillar assist will likely see increased landing recovery, and have Annie land in front of the character who blocked her more often instead of landing safely behind them. These changes are to make the aftermath and risk of a blocked DP assist call more in line with other assists.
• cLP may get some slight nerfs.
• Depending on how some of the global experiments shared way above go, she may receive the right amount of toning down to fall in line with other characters without many other changes. (Reduced two touch potential, DHC unscale changes hurting her Meteor Strike damage in the corner, her throw loops at max Undizzy, etc.)
TY FOR NERFING INSTALL i legitimately didnt use it for the first year of play bc i thout it was really lame and BLATANTLY busted. my thot was if u kept it the same to make it a lvl 5, but im glad to see its gettign a full rework. im hoping stars only show up on heavy normals like 5HK, jHK, 2HK and jHP but those normals are the most oppresive ones. im SO down for RC and Ex specials in install like + on block north knuckle, +on block dive kick (but maybe remove airdash cancels) and a DP that REACHES EVEN HIGHER!!! and gives sliding KD or combo. i have to fight my best friend joel badguy going dragon install every game in XRD and now i wanna do it too. maybe make crescent disappear on hit cuz when h crescent trades after i got hit by a jab and i get full combo its not cool or fun. so with the assists change here its fine ig but for my team personally it doesnt really matter. i play Pea and Squig so my abillity to punish someone trying to punish my assist from anywhere on screen is really strong and tbh, its just gonna bait people into getting hit, so yea im all for it. personlly i prefer this change over the damage change as i discussed b4 but that may be biased. also 2lp really isnt that big of a deal imo and people being mad at a good anti air is crazy to me. like they just want to jump at me for free and make it so i have to outplay them 10-1 just to anti air. again maybe im biased, but 2lp doesnt need to changed and at worse, maybe some damage scalling nerf but please just let it rock its already impossible to anti air fortune or squigly or like half the cast it feels nice to have a reliable anti air in this game.
• Something(s) will change with Ice Shot, and perhaps a few other things for shots.
• JHK confirms may see a scaling penalty. • H Reload may see changes, but it may not! At the moment, I'm pretty happy with how H is being used, but I could see us changing around the order of where the bullets are loaded into the chamber such as [3 and 5], or[2 and 5], instead of the current [3 and 6].
• M Reload could be more interesting, so if there's an opportunity for control over your ammo choice, it would live here. I will mention that it's (obviously) very intentional Black Dahlia does not have access to: Reload + Pick shot type, Shoot shot type, Reload + Pick shot type, Shoot shot type...
• Empower shouldn't work on corpses and give you the buff.
nerf ice shot, maybe assists eat the entirety of it. i kinda hate when i shot hits my assists and i STILL get frozen for a free happy birtday. maybe make it so im not encased in ice for so long that Eskimos would blush. jHK scalling may be justified too it can b oppressive in conjunction with shots and assists calls. other then that tho i think shes kinda overhyped and mostly fine so im glad these changes are minor and adress the main issues people have without going to crazy with the nerf hammer, although maybe with the nerfs to other prominent chars (especially pea being her worst match up receiveing a lot of nerfs) she might rise up quite a bit. might b something to keep an eye on
in conclusion this patch looks awesome and everything being considered for implementation seems fun, interesting and reasonable. ty SG dev team i hope this game lasts longer then rick and morty and i hope we go long enough that you guys get to add the best character, Feng
• I'm inclined to give a decent amount of weight to ideas for how to nerf Ms. Fortune from the Ms. Fortune players themselves, so many of these changes will be familiar to those who have kept up with the thread, and for those who experienced the short lived Ms. Fortune nerfs from the last patch before they were cut short.
• cLK head loops will be removed.
• jLK will see tweaks.
• Reduced confirm time from Nom seems reasonable.
• Worth trying changes to hit the head more reliably for all characters when it gets stuck behind them, in addition to perhaps locking it out for longer.
• Making her supers easier to punish when they end near the head is a good suggestion.
• She may need targeted damage nerfs on top of any other global changes we may experiment with.
• I'd like to continue the previous experiment of making her easier to hit when she's up backing away from you, but with a new approach.
• Something about her plethora of very effective defensive options will probably be adjusted, be it Fiber, Headroll, or both.
• For Fiber, letting Ms. Fortune get thrown for attempting it by moving it to strike invuln feels like the right call here. For how fast she can slip away if you're not jumping in front of her, more options to call out Fiber in neutral (with or without an assist backing it, which makes it especially difficult to counter) would be ideal. Making it more unsafe on block so the slower characters can get into position to punish it as suggested seems reasonable too. We'll see where everything shakes out with her defensive options and we're still discussing internally.
• On the often mentioned topic of "just make the head not mess up my combos please"...
→ There are multiple ways that hitting pet characters can work on other fighting games, and they come with flaws.
→ Style 1: You hit Ms. Fortune's head, go into hitpause, you keep your active hitbox the entire time, but now your button has 12+ active frames. In games with this implementation (Arcsys), you'll see someone strike a pet character with a heavy, then the opponent dashes in super late and gets hit by the 20th active frame on a heavy normal and explodes for it. I don't think we'll be doing this.
→ Style 2: You hit Ms. Fortune's head, you don't go into hitpause and your active frames aren't extended NOR are they cut short. Only the pet experiences the properties of a hit making contact. Now characters can rapid fire cLP on the head which looks very jank and deals tons of damage very quickly, since they aren't going into hitpause. This especially doesn't work for Ms. Fortune herself, as now when she suki cancels off her own head with sHK she experiences no hitpause when doing so. Boy, if you thought cLK loops were bad now...
→ Style 3: Little Eddie, Zappa's dog, Dizzy's fish, lol.
→ Style ?: If there are other more elegant ways to handle this, I have no qualms admitting I'm unfamiliar with them.
→ None of these styles really account for a projectile hitting the head earlier than the body and causing it to end the hit early, and this phenomenon happens all the time during happy birthday combos that involve projectiles. (EX: sHP sHP x Napalm Shot will almost always drop one character out)
→ The correct "make the head not mess up my combos" implementation is subjective, and they all have different problems. I am going to infer that the way it works now is the desired implementation during her creation, and the least problematic of all implementations - no? Spot fixing issues like Beowulf cMK not working correctly when the head nearby however is doable, so I can look at those!
PEACOCK
• Look at SoiD losing its hitbox and / or having a delay on dropping post flash as mentioned.
• Something to give players a bit more time to live and room to try thingswhen dealing with her zoning at fullscreen is worth discussing IMO. I'd like to see players have more time to experiment and use their character specific tools to try and get in on her without taking over 2000 damage every time they bump into a projectile that combos into another one following behind it. This damage adds up fast and makes it feel like you only have a handful of attempts to get in before you lose the character - I don't think that feeling will change drastically, but perhaps it's worth tweaking some things about this. Robo-Fortune lost CH damage bonus damage on Beams for a similar reason many moons ago, and I've been thinking about the same for Peacock. Level 1 item drop on CH (often sneaking above and interrupting something you're trying) hits for a whopping 1275. Extra metergain for the defender and/or damage scaling on projectile starters would give players access to more super options to try and make a play with. I'm mentioning all of this in the spirit of having her fullscreen presence be more two player than it is now, while still keeping the options she has access to more or less the same. Eager to hear other perspectives.
"Lenny needs nerfs and/or should be 2 bars"
• Making Lenny 2 bars and calling it a day is probably the simplest solution.
• There are other things that I think could be explored instead while still keeping it a one bar super:
→ No CH damage bonus.
→ Significantly less damage.
→ Peacock builds zero meter while it's out, down from 30% (?) or whatever the current penalty is.
→ Lenny has a hit when placed, and this hit can be blocked making M Bang x Lenny unsafe. (M Bang x Lenny will be unsafe as one of the experiments for her, this change aside. One bar safe on block reversals were removed for Double and Fukua, Peacock should really not be keeping it as a zoner.)
→ The hit from Lenny could also be implemented to remove the happy birthday L Bang x Lenny into teleport 50/50, completely safe, guess-for-your-assist-character's-life mix up, which I think is very strongand worth looking at.
"Bombs should go away when Peacock is hit"
• Sure, let's talk about that. Bombs sticking around so they can trade favorably with opponents in defensive situations feels like a pretty big part of her kit. It may be too strong of a perk for her to have given how quick and slippery she is, and how fast she can get bombs out.
• There are two things I'd prefer to try first before "bombs go away on hit", instead:
→ Bombs go away on hit, but only after a delay. Using M or H to trade against a dash in or jump in would still be viable, but if you just called the bomb mere frames before getting hit, it would explode before it reaches her. Standing inside of L George and playing footsies as you walk backwards with him would still be viable, but him walking across the entire screen to interrupt would not be, etc. You can envision how that would work hopefully.
→ Bombs have atrocious damage scaling applied if they hit the opponent after Peacock goes into hitstun. This experiment was tried briefly before, but this would be a more aggressive version, maybe even scaling down to 20%. Peacock would very much be incentivized to reset ASAP or knock the opponent away, lest she donates tons of meter to the opponent for a small amount of damage in return.
→ Could do weaker versions of both of these ideas, but combined.
I share a similar sentiment as a fortune player that most of these changes sound fair. I do agree that there should be more incentive to be headless vs headon as that is her main mechanic as a rushdown/puppet character. J.lk is a very good air normal but there are a few other characters in the game with an air normal I would argue that is quite as good. Not sure if fortune is in the talk for that to be nerfed because of her current reward from it but if damage and other things are being tweaked, I'm not sure if j.lk should be shot as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANNIE
• Worth reading the "JUST BUFF EVERYONE" and "TEAM BUILDING, CHARACTER CHOICE, AND GLUE CHARACTERS" sections at the top of my post again. I expect some players will disagree with us and ask for everyone to be as strong as Annie, but I think we're just going to have to respectfully disagree and figure out a way to move forward with some tough calls.
• Star Power (Install) is expected to see a full rework, with higher meter cost up front to activate it like a normal super. The goal will be to make the state more fun to be in, more fun to fight against, with a much shorter duration. She could end up strictly more powerful than before while in install, but with it costing more meter and lasting for a shorter amount of time I think it should be alright, and anything is more fun to fight against than stars are currently!
→ Stars will likely be retired on many normals and must be summoned explicitly on select attacks in a different ways.
→ We'll experiment with powered up special moves much like you see in Skullgirls Mobile during her install.
→ I'd like to try giving her a RC that drains a lot of her remaining power.
→ Some attacks may get cooler properties.
→ Think Dragon Install / HoS instead of Dark Phoenix.
• We'll try having Crescent Cut be less effective when thrown out carelessly up close. Currently it reaches the ability to trade extremely fast.
• There will probably be some tweaks to her normals (frame data and/or hitboxes)
• Destruction Pillar assist will likely see increased landing recovery, and have Annie land in front of the character who blocked her more often instead of landing safely behind them. These changes are to make the aftermath and risk of a blocked DP assist call more in line with other assists.
• cLP may get some slight nerfs.
• Depending on how some of the global experiments shared way above go, she may receive the right amount of toning down to fall in line with other characters without many other changes. (Reduced two touch potential, DHC unscale changes hurting her Meteor Strike damage in the corner, her throw loops at max Undizzy, etc.)
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The install changes sounds awesome. I don't currently find star power as it is now to be too fun to use and its not something in my opinion think she needs. Her having a level 1, 2, 3, and a really powerful install with its own supers attached to it felt a little overdone for her and half the time I've never personally use in my matches. Mostly because I never felt like I've needed to with the rest of her kit being as it is. In someone else's post in reply about some of the Annie suggestions about her c.lp is that I also feel that not too many characters have a solid anti air. I would like if more characters had something pretty reliable to contest characters jumping and air dashing at them so I'm not really feeling that change to be honest. Annie has a lot of tools so maybe that is just something to change on her so that she doesn't have everything going for her but I think having more solid anti airs in general is a good thing for any character.
Star Power (Install) is expected to see a full rework, with higher meter cost up front to activate it like a normal super. The goal will be to make the state more fun to be in, more fun to fight against, with a much shorter duration. She could end up strictly more powerful than before while in install, but with it costing more meter and lasting for a shorter amount of time I think it should be alright, and anything is more fun to fight against than stars are currently!
It's interesting reading the opinion of Star Power being that's boring from the replies so far (but not a bad thing! I just don't talk to many other Skullgirls players) since I'm personally in a weird spot about it myself but usually overall end up leaning more towards liking it. I like in it's current state that having it as a tool for her makes no situation feel insurmountable (as a kind of middling usually Solo Annie player) but also I'd agree with the sentiment that the stars are really unfun to play against and an opinion I've heard from the SG players I do regularly fight that a 4-5 meter Annie with a well placed install can feel kind of impossible to beat. Long way to get to that while my initial reaction to reading the idea was some disappointment the more I think about it a rework sounds like the best approach.
I liked the idea Ikkisoad mentioned of having her install tied to an independant timer instead of meter drain. Also, I'm curious as someone who likes them a lot, would she be keeping Gravity Collapse and Photo Bop (and if so I'm curious how, if at all, they'd be changed to work with a reworked install)?
I agree with most if not all the changes discussed here so far. My only gripe is to be cautious about how much you nerf damage. Even just bringing the game to a three-touch game makes it so the characters who could not two-touch before much worse. An overall umbrella (not the character) nerf to the cast may kill the fast pace we all love. Sage said it best "if everyone had Fukua damage this game would be a lot more boring." If we establish where generally bombo damage should be then we can change case to case. Big band should still hit you hard because that's what he does for example.
As far as my own addition to this post, I want to put forward the idea of hurt box tweaking. The meme of Squigly having the "aqua man trait" from injustice is very funny it can also be very frustrating in practice. In this case, I think a hurt box increase maybe to the width of filia may be appropriate. On the flip side, for someone as large as big band. His size has interesting implications, it helps him in some respects but hurts him by taking specific mix setups that are very hard to block. Band being that big has its faults and benefits so I am good with that. Characters like Annie, Umbrella, and Squigly just straight benefit from being small and hard to hit/combo consistently even with the most stable routes.
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