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The Unofficial Official Beta Discussion Thread

Liam said:
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"- I'm going to try some pretty big rework style changes, I expect her gameplan to be different.
- I'd like to see more ebb and flow between all of the available states, rather than camping the razors edge of Ravenous the whole match.
- Will probably see changes to make her feel more consistent in all states and a bit more "Skullgirlsy feeling" (looking at giving her a good overhead for example), but removing and nerfing her more frustrating things to deal with.
- Ravenous will probably feel a bit different. It may be "worse", as rising JMP is definitely going, and I want to test her being unable to use bubbles in this state, but Ravenous might be even better than before at just rushing you down aggressively as its primary focus.
- Satiated and Overstuffed will hopefully feel better and easier to play."

thats cool. dynamic things like that keep players trying new characters. sounds like brella the way many were expecting. kinda slow & lumbering but powerful hits & Batting away projectiles with a fun bat move (on f1 would be nice) for overstuffed & normal being a standard skullgirl moveset with decent-good frame data, then ravenous being the super fun form we can go crazy with & solid ways to manipulate the meter with (good) unique identities for each mode. after aba players been having so much fun def would love to try.

also, dahlia, please make her movement feel more smooth. her dash primarily. Bullets being locked behind meter and onslaught being a more dynamic movement suite. Still have the things i mentioned before as stuff id love to see changed which seemed to bring a decent consensus/agreement but i guess we'll get to dahlia later.
 
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Umbrella stuff caught my attention, so here I am. It was her input changes that made me make an account here to start with, so I guess now we know how to get me to post ;P

Truth be told, I'm not knowledgeable enough to have in-depth thoughts on this kind of thing as it relates to the meta. That said, I'm not necessarily opposed to leaning more into making use of her various states — I find myself wishing, for instance, that I had more reason to use the other states instead of just trying to stay in Ravenous or maybe Overstuffed for bubble assists.

I'm also not opposed to giving her an overhead, but I just know 4MP would mess me up like crazy. 5MP is my go-to button for, like, everything and I have Always Be Charging in my bones.

...Idle thought and not really a serious suggestion, but on the subject of Umbrella and overheads, her 5HK has always looked more like an overhead than a crossup to me. It'd probably be way worse if you did that, but I just think it's a bit of a flaw when a move's animation doesn't convey how you need to block it. (Y'all are lucky you can't go for new assets right now because I consider Robo-Fortune's current 5HK animation a crime.)

...actually, speaking of that. If that's the case, where is the animation for that overhead coming from? ...oh, is it from that one Double super? That'd explain why I don't recognize it...
 
Umbrella rework changes were shown today on Stream for those who are interested. This patch is good to go, probably releasing on Monday:

4h 56m 11s is the timestamp, which should work here:
 
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Hi Liam,

I've played maybe 300-350ish games on beta since the patch, and here are my thoughts below.
Overall I think the beta balance patch is great and a step in the right direction. From my perspective it looks like the goal is definitely to close the gap in strength between both ends of the cast. Your preview on the upcoming Umbrella rework has me optimistic for what's to come.
Assists:
- Counter hit assist calls now scale combo damage to 75%, instead of 90% in retail.
This is a good change, though I'd love to see this number pushed a bit further, to maybe 70-65%.

I think getting a CH assist starter should incentivize either going for your HBD or positioning yourself to reset, rather than look for full conversions from it.

I'd also like to see a slight increase in assist cooldowns overall after calling them.
Characters with resources can get them a bit too easily (Squig charge, Umbrella - though she is getting changed, and Robo head drone, etc) when calling assists. In some cases it is disadvantageous to poke or punish the assist character while they get their resources behind them.

A slightly longer cooldown would also give a little more breathing room in the corner for the defender. If you've blocked their assist already and blocked the point character, there should be some breathing room before these assists are pressuring the defender again.

I'd also like this because some games can degrade interactions to the two point characters having a Pokemon battle with their two assist characters. There should be a bit more incentive to interact in different ways rather than click H beam / brass / downback + dp assist, etc.
(watching two people click H beam assist at each other is also boring to watch as a spectator)

A slight cooldown increase may also let us see a bit more variety in assists or relieve a little bit of pressure from current meta team building. (DP / Strong neutral assist + Safe DHC / cashout DHC).

Speaking of assists, the Robo H beam change is very good. The difference is noticeable, and the opponent does need to think about when they are calling it.

I'd also like to see Dahlia trap assist have a slightly bigger window before she can place a new one, it feels a tad too frequent imo.
- OTG bounce colour change
Could we have an option to make this indicator a little easier to see? I generally have difficulty seeing the bounce effect mid-match.
- L Hornet Bomber fix
This change omg, love your work. I've not seen any L bomber funny business since, and I greatly appreciate this. Thank you.

- Catheads changes (consistency)
This is nice but not as overly noticeable, I do like both consistency buffs overall as they aren't overbearing for the character.

- Luger (L knockback change, M / H Blockstun changes)
I spent a fair bit of time in training room with the L Luger change. Notably, it is a lot easier to convert if you shoot Big Band (was very difficult/spacing specific before). As for combo damage I'm getting around ~7k for 1 bar. It's a good change for Double as previously converting was fine on some of the cast but not universally.

The M and H luger changes are interesting. M blockstun increase is very good and may even be a bit too strong. I do agree with reducing the blockstun on H luger as it is a callout tool.

- Flesh Step changes
She gains enough meter right now, but I understand adding this for consistency. I'm yet to really notice the extra 3f of projectile invincibility.

If Double proves to be a menace (She is very good right now), I'd suggest reverting the meter gain from step again, and changing M luger to gain 2f blockstun instead of 4f.
- Elbow
Thank you for fixing the Pika_Bat bug. As SeaJay mentioned, this is nice because now we can work out whether our bad elbows are skill issue or not.

- jHP changes
I've messed around with the glide a bit and it seems less bad to use now that Bella zooms at her opponent with it.
The falling jHP overhead change is very good, and I didn't expect it to bring as much value as it has in my games. Quite strong imo.

- Copter change
Thank you for this, getting weird dynamo on child characters was very annoying.

I'd really like to see 2mp be able to consistently hit Painwheel after pummel horse too. (or even potentially be able to buffer normals after pummel).
I agree with Iso about Robo-Fortune.
Personally, I'd like to see the head drone mine disappear while falling if she is hit with an air button. Right now you can hit her during startup but before the mine is fully active, but it is impossible to know whether you have timed this right and can continue hit her, or if you need to block again.
I'd also like to see the hitbox on her 2mk not be so reliable at anti-airing.

Right now she is incredibly difficult to catch with some characters, especially with assists behind her.

The Filia 2MK change is great and noticeable as well.

Annie screams too much.

I would have loved to have something to say on the Peacock changes, but I've yet to play against the character on beta.
 
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My thoughts.

Eliza
patch stuff;

Being able to DHC into Eliza for less than 3 bars is nice, but locking it behind taunt makes it hard to set up and bold to run a team around. If you have the taunt, you had to have played Eliza earlier, so she should be missing some health, so getting more after regaining your red health as soon as she comes in makes for quite a lot of health recovery. I doubt we will see it used much.

Point Eliza can kara axe into bite super without taunt, so the only thing the taunt opens for her on point would be canceling out of a special move, but none of her specials really work with it. The best I could get was a spiral if you dropped the last hit.

Not being Frame 1 invuln makes it not a reversal option that could be punished if blocked.

It really feels like it's only for DHCs and is limited in usability for solos.

Before the patch, I was wondering if having it as a DHC option without the taunt restrictions would be OP. opens up the option to have Eliza mid and gives her a way to off-set the red health lost when DHCing in after using butchers or Axe assist.
Draining corpses was good if you had 5 bars since you don't really have a good way to front load with meter. The heal was nice to get but not worth a bar. I don't think this was an issue.
M-spiral pulling blood is a great change. If you do a combo where you don't need H spiral to kill and there is blood on the floor, you get the blood and the 50-50 incoming. It used to feel like if you went for taunt, you'd lose the chance to left/right on incoming.
throne red bounce feels like something that should have already been there, but there are so few ways to get throne OTG less solo that it doesn't feel like much of a buff. nice to have, but nothing crazy.
Sekhmet getting counter-hit when attacking just makes sense and rewards contesting the hyper-armored character. rewards good counterplay. Good change.
Sekhmet landing recovery feels odd. Comboing out of Sek jH feels harder than it was, and the timing for some follow-ups, like rising Sek jM, were already difficult on heavys and some mediums. I don't think it makes the character easier to counter by enough to justify the routing issues it presents. might be a skill issue or me not having the feel for the changes, but I don't really get the design goals behind them.

2f more jump start up, I can't even notice
I didn't think there was an issue being able to recall after hitting an assist with Sek 5H on block. Calling assist into Sek is a bad idea, so is it really a problem if she gets more reward for her opponent's bad decision?
Sek jM and Sek 5H having the same damage feels weird when they have different Undizzy. This wouldn't be a problem if they were all 20 undizzy, like special moves, but that might end up giving her higher damage routes.

Damage reduction feels weirdly targeted since you lose health for Sek moves in the first place. The extra damage you do by comboing into Sekhmet is usually less than the damage you do to yourself. I never realized that Eliza's damage was much of an issue in the first place.

other stuff;

You can pickup OTG less from Bite Super if you already spent OTG, but if you haven't, it's hard to not lose it. makes routing around Bite kind of annoying. Would it be an issue if you could more consistently pickup OTGlessly out of Crimson Scourge? Maybe if you hold K during the super, she goes back to Eliza, leaving her more plus.
I just wanted to touch on the fact that Sekhmet doesn't build meters. I understand that it used to cost meter, but now that it costs health, I feel this wouldn't be unfair.

As it is, if you have less than a bar as Sekhmet and are combing someone away from your anchor point, you cannot build a bar to bring the anchor over to you, regardless of how long the combo is. You also can't reliably build a second bar for kill combos or DHC out to recover the red health she just built. You need to already have the bars ready. Since you would be building meter as Eliza anyway, you are still effectively meter negative anyway.
It's common to try and punish assist calls with H-kaht, and you lose any advantage if your opponent blocks it. Would it be too much if she could jump-cancel even if it was blocked? My main concern would be that she could get TK Kaht out of it and reset the pressure. On the other hand, a pushblock defuses the situation anyway. food for thought.
It might be a skill issue, but I find it unusually difficult to convert out of Lvl 3 midscreen. If she had a bit less end lag or launched higher, then it would be easier to convert off. I understand wanting to make it, so you need OTG to convert it off, but even if you could convert it off with light moves in the corner, it probably wouldn't be broken.


Double

The L-bomber changes feel really good and are not broken. still loses to stuff now and then, but not nearly as regularly.

The Lugar changes feel good. Frames on block feel more noticeable than the launch distance changes, but I haven't played around with it enough to really say.

won't complain about the free meter from Step. I'm not sure she needs it, but I don't think it's broken.

Robo

I personally would like to see Robo's meterless combos do more damage in exchange for less damage from supers. would give you a reason to actually play the character rather than just have her in the back and hope your other characters got enough value out of H-beam and high damage DHCs before you have to play her. I'm not suggesting that she should be able to 2 or even 3 touch, but I'd love to see a slight redistribution of her damage.
 
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Greenhood said:
My thoughts.

Eliza
patch stuff;

Being able to DHC into Eliza for less than 3 bars is nice, but locking it behind taunt makes it hard to set up and bold to run a team around. If you have the taunt, you had to have played Eliza earlier, so she should be missing some health, so getting more after regaining your red health as soon as she comes in makes for quite a lot of health recovery. I doubt we will see it used much.

Point Eliza can kara axe into bite super without taunt, so the only thing the taunt opens for her on point would be canceling out of a special move, but none of her specials really work with it. The best I could get was a spiral if you dropped the last hit.

Not being Frame 1 invuln makes it not a reversal option that could be punished if blocked.

It really feels like it's only for DHCs and is limited in usability for solos.

Before the patch, I was wondering if having it as a DHC option without the taunt restrictions would be OP. opens up the option to have Eliza mid and gives her a way to off-set the red health lost when DHCing in after using butchers or Axe assist.
Draining corpses was good if you had 5 bars since you don't really have a good way to front load with meter. The heal was nice to get but not worth a bar. I don't think this was an issue.
M-spiral pulling blood is a great change. If you do a combo where you don't need H spiral to kill and there is blood on the floor, you get the blood and the 50-50 incoming. It used to feel like if you went for taunt, you'd lose the chance to left/right on incoming.
throne red bounce feels like something that should have already been there, but there are so few ways to get throne OTG less solo that it doesn't feel like much of a buff. nice to have, but nothing crazy.
Sekhmet getting counter-hit when attacking just makes sense and rewards contesting the hyper-armored character. rewards good counterplay. Good change.
Sekhmet landing recovery feels odd. Comboing out of Sek jH feels harder than it was, and the timing for some follow-ups, like rising Sek jM, were already difficult on heavys and some mediums. I don't think it makes the character easier to counter by enough to justify the routing issues it presents. might be a skill issue or me not having the feel for the changes, but I don't really get the design goals behind them.

2f more jump start up, I can't even notice
I didn't think there was an issue being able to recall after hitting an assist with Sek 5H on block. Calling assist into Sek is a bad idea, so is it really a problem if she gets more reward for her opponent's bad decision?
Sek jM and Sek 5H having the same damage feels weird when they have different Undizzy. This wouldn't be a problem if they were all 20 undizzy, like special moves, but that might end up giving her higher damage routes.

Damage reduction feels weirdly targeted since you lose health for Sek moves in the first place. The extra damage you do by comboing into Sekhmet is usually less than the damage you do to yourself. I never realized that Eliza's damage was much of an issue in the first place.

other stuff;

You can pickup OTG less from Bite Super if you already spent OTG, but if you haven't, it's hard to not lose it. makes routing around Bite kind of annoying. Would it be an issue if you could more consistently pickup OTGlessly out of Crimson Scourge? Maybe if you hold K during the super, she goes back to Eliza, leaving her more plus.
I just wanted to touch on the fact that Sekhmet doesn't build meters. I understand that it used to cost meter, but now that it costs health, I feel this wouldn't be unfair.

As it is, if you have less than a bar as Sekhmet and are combing someone away from your anchor point, you cannot build a bar to bring the anchor over to you, regardless of how long the combo is. You also can't reliably build a second bar for kill combos or DHC out to recover the red health she just built. You need to already have the bars ready. Since you would be building meter as Eliza anyway, you are still effectively meter negative anyway.
It's common to try and punish assist calls with H-kaht, and you lose any advantage if your opponent blocks it. Would it be too much if she could jump-cancel even if it was blocked? My main concern would be that she could get TK Kaht out of it and reset the pressure. On the other hand, a pushblock defuses the situation anyway. food for thought.
It might be a skill issue, but I find it unusually difficult to convert out of Lvl 3 midscreen. If she had a bit less end lag or launched higher, then it would be easier to convert off. I understand wanting to make it, so you need OTG to convert it off, but even if you could convert it off with light moves in the corner, it probably wouldn't be broken.

My response to this, in order. I dont know how to format this better so it is what it is.

"Crimson Scourge after taunt"

Eliza DHC taunt change is welcome, it doesnt have to be a reversal DHC, it matters more that you can DHC into her and have her as a mid after tagging her out. Good change.

"Life Drain on corpses"
Life drain on corpses doesnt matter as it was a bad investment anyways, them taking it away just makes it so the people that actually did do it cant anymore, but i dont know anyone that personally did. You can still route into bite being the finishing kill, and if its about avoiding chip damage. You already landed bite, at that point you cant get chipped unless the opponent escapes, and then somehow has like 3k damage of chip.

"M-Spiral"
M spiral still unusable, blood draw effect doesnt matter, Eliza doesnt need that to collect 99% of the blod that spawns from sekhmet anyways.
Its extremely niche. But niche is fine, it has uses although not many.

"Throne Red bounce"
Throne pink bounce is an extremely welcome change which helps Eliza in many aspects as the move was horribly mad due to the lockout of converting unless you had the opportunity to iad jMK at certain ranges. Or other niche scenarios. And for combos its certainly helpful though its preferred if it had its own IPS tracker due to it causing burst conflicts with Horace.

"Sekhmet counter-hit"
Sekhmet counterhit change is welcome.

"Sekhmet frame data"
Sekhmets jump frame lockout is both noticable and really jarring for multiple reasons but combos being the main one. Both of those many of us agree just cannot be in because it fundamentally breaks the character in half for a lot of what she used to do.

"Blocked Axe with assist"
Dont do 5H anyways? If you did 5H and they called assist, that just means that you pressed it knowing you wouldnt be able to backflip.
Dont be impatient and just do 5M into backflip instead.

"Axe and Ptahxe nerfs"
To some degree i agree that a 30 dizzy move and a 20 dizzy move both being near identical doing the same damage is off, but well see what Liam thinks.



Now to the crazier ones. (Please no)

"Skellymeter"
NO. We should NOT have this, the mode is good as it is counting they fix the frame issues. This mode should in absolutely NO CIRCUMSTANCES, build bar. Thats an insane request to have.

"H-kaht on assist hit"
Also. NO. That change would make Eliza the one of the most insanely oppressive characters in the game, that could DP in your face and jump cancel into blocking and land cancelling anyones approach instantly. It would make her nigh unpunishable in the correct circumstances she would throw the move out. Another change under NO CIRCUMSTANCES she should get.

"Lvl 3 Conversions"
You said it yourself, skill issue.



Eliza should only get Throne IPS to be its own thing, and sekhmet frame data change reverted, and if by some small miracle, have 5H axe deal a little bit more than jM but thats a dream and not even a request. That is all.
 
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Afince said:
I agree with Iso about Robo-Fortune.
Personally, I'd like to see the head drone mine disappear while falling if she is hit with an air button. Right now you can hit her during startup but before the mine is fully active, but it is impossible to know whether you have timed this right and can continue hit her, or if you need to block again.
I'd also like to see the hitbox on her 2mk not be so reliable at anti-airing.

Right now she is incredibly difficult to catch with some characters, especially with assists behind her.

Considering the move lasts for like 60 frames, having the mine disappear on hit without a hitbox is shoots a lot of the utility of the move. Currently if she's hit as mine starts up she either gets hit and the mine explodes where the opponent isn't(too early) or she's minus in the opponent's face(too late).

I think we're mostly on the same page about Robo's strengths right now, but I think the utility of headdrones is OK, because she isn't gaining her resources mid combo like the other resource characters, she's pulling them in neutral or after a knockdown 99% of the time , and unless she's got a fullscreen assist to cover her the opponent can gain a lot of ground if she decides to go for it. I do think that some of her matchups are really egregious(literally just Bella), but changing a committal defensive option that's stapled to a resource is not the way to do it.

Iso said:
With the beta nerfs and adjustments to some of her bad matchups like Fortune, I think she'll be in a very, very good spot. The only thing I would MAYBE tinker with besides H Beam is how egregious her escape options can be sometimes(which has been stated earlier IIRC)
While we're on the topic, here's some other Robo adjustments that I have seen suggested from like-minded people:

-2MK tends to trade with or outright beat certain jump ins(Bella jMP is lol). 2MK was designed to be a very strong neutral tool(in the tutorial, no less), but this puts it way over the top.

-Upfoward is abnormally strong at beating fake/bad pressure due to how tiny the air hurtbox is after the prejump frames. If she wants to beat this kind of pressure, she has options to do that (Saw, great boxing tools/antiairs, calling assist), but upforward also has a bit of a one-size-fits-all problem.

If she were to receive compensatory changes(not a necessity because I think she's fine as is), I think options to be aggressive by spending headdrones could be a really cool and fun way to make the character feel more tied to her resource. Something like spending a headdrone for a temporary airdash,
or being able to dust jump in neutral without landing 5HK. Admittably I'm just spitballing here, but this is something I'd like to fiddle with while we're in this exploratory period.
 
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I think Maries jHP could use a qol buff


The range could be bigger on the 2nd hit
The 2nd hit is faster
The both hits vacuums the opponent
The first hit has more hitstun and less knock back
This happens with most of the cast's jump in moves
 
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I think the m-bang -> lenny additional recovery on hit is too much.

I also think the additional recovery on DHC is a step too far, at least on hit. Maybe even so on block.

I know the changes are to keep her from being too safe on reversal, but it negatively impacts the rewards too much as well. Her ability to mix up and kill a team with Lenny is completely gone so she should at least be able to meter dump considering her meterless corner carry potential is already dog water and she's doing less damage anyways.



side note: new umbrella looks amazing.
 
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I sort of agree with Dhoppler. I'm all up for M bang having more whiff recovery and especially Mbang into lenny being more punishable on block, but the nerfs as they stand seem overkill. In retail the -10 mbang into lenny is hard to punish because if you're not point blank you can't hit her with a light and even then the window to buffer your punish feels so small that its easy to miss despite the screen freeze announcing she's punishable. Making it a bit more negative with the pull in effect would fix this nicely, but from -10 to -41 seems excessive. Also yeah, my bigger problem atm is that the lenny additional recovery is messing up a lot of DHC combo timings, and even completely ruins some against the likes of Big Band.

Also unpopular opinion but that with Lenny giving Peacock no meter, doing over 1K less damage, and being unable to counter hit, I think Lenny not being useful in HBD's could be looked at? Even in retail duo vs trio I can't kill the assist without another string into spending a bar (assuming the point didn't block the mix) and now lenny does less and Peacock can't even build the bar for argus in some situations. It's just that Peacock's HBD potential feels super inconsistent without L bang into lenny stuff. S.hp, s.hk, j.hk, item drop, and sometimes j.lk all drop when trying to combo two characters at once, even if they're the same weight class. If the lenny HBD option has to go, I wish some of peacock's moves could at least get more consistent when juggling multiple characters so she can still get some reward when getting a HPD midscreen. Also I must say, it really sucks when you get a HBD as one character, super to kill the point and then go into lenny to try and juggle/finish off the assist before lenny explodes but instead the assist just gets out for free.

Final remark for now: with Lenny losings hundreds of damage in combos and bringing down Peacock's meter dump/DHC damage potential, is the argus damage nerf necessary? Argusing the opponent who whiffed a move, got hit by an assist or projectile etc already felt usually not worth the meter half the time and now you're barely breaking 2.7K even with a level 1 item drop mixed in. I'd rather her lose a couple hundred from her normals or something than affect her zoning damage.
 
Swiftfox-Dash said:
Also unpopular opinion but that with Lenny giving Peacock no meter, doing over 1K less damage, and being unable to counter hit, I think Lenny not being useful in HBD's could be looked at?
No, no, no and absolutely not. I will die on this hill.

Being able to make the opponent guess for TWO CHARACTERS for one bar was never healthy for the game. I really struggle to think of anything with more skewed risk reward than old Lenny's HBD ability. This is in the realm of fortune instant head cooldown and old Fukua M shadow levels of "do thing for zero risk, get rewarded and win the game" in terms of what decisions you are making in neutral versus the reward you are actually getting. Peacock has dodged normalization for far too long, and Lenny no longer easily carry two characters to the corner is something Peacock players are just going to have to route around. This might be the single most meaningful and healthy nerf to Peacock besides the george nerf.

I understand the frustration that comes with lenny being less powerful, but even with all the nerfs, it is still an incredibly powerful level 1 super. Letting it happy birthday easily is opening pandora's box again; despite the other nerfs she received, if it is changed back, Peacock players WILL find a way to force people to guess for their team and I think you are aware of this. If Peacock is bad at comboing two characters to the corner now, good. Characters should have weaknesses and this is a what a weakness the player needs to work around actually looks like. Fortune head can be locked out for much longer, Lenny doesn't make you guess for your team. Both healthy normalizations the undisputed top two characters have dodged for too long. Also consider that headless Fortune, one of the most powerful characters in the game, is absolute garbage at corner carrying two characters, and that's probably a good thing forthe game.

I concede maybe the argus nerf was overkill. If we're going to revert any of the nerfs that's a good place to start. I still think she should be able to meter dump for damage, but as long as teleport is something she gets to do with little counterplay lenny doesn't need to easily hit or kill two characters.


Dhoppler said:
I think the m-bang -> lenny additional recovery on hit is too much.
This however, is a legitimate point. I think Liam has already addressed that this is going to get looked at.

Iso said:
-Upfoward is abnormally strong at beating fake/bad pressure due to how tiny the air hurtbox is after the prejump frames. If she wants to beat this kind of pressure, she has options to do that (Saw, great boxing tools/antiairs, calling assist), but upforward also has a bit of a one-size-fits-all problem.
I really agree with this and think that Robo Fortune should get the same normalization to her jumping frames Fortune received. Yes she is a zoner, and the archetype is supposed to be "slippery", but as long as she has j.HK (which lets her basically circumvent the "you don't get to call assists at superjump height" rule and also easily escape, I do not think she should have this. Upforward in this game is powerful enough already. Saw + assist and j.hk are doing enough for her on defense that she should not carry on the sins of her flesh counterpart. I really think there may be some implicit bias from Robo Fortune players here. Fortune was better than Robo Fortune, but not by a massive degree, and now that Fortune has been nerfed so severely robo is in a better spot by default like Iso said. I don't think any character should have a hitbox as whacky as the old Fortune/current robo Fortune jumping one, regardless of archetype. It simply feels awful to play against. So many "this is just how Skullgirls is!" bad gamefeel things have been axed that I feel like I'm being pretty reasonable here by asking for this to be removed.
 
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Hello, Liam. Russian community has been working on balance propositions for the beta, hope this post will be of use to you. It's a community effort, we've been brainstorming things since October, but I feel like it's too late to polish the post any longer, since Beta updates have already begun. We hope that the input from our community will be of value to you.

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.
Current “two touch meta” feels just right, in our opinion. The issue with two touches isn’t that people can kill you with two touches, it’s that some characters from the roundstart can begin their stagger pressure or perform a setup that, unless the defender backs off, they will get put in a blender. The volatility of the neutral does not benefit certain team compositions with the current range between players at the start of the round, but increasing this distance might help smooth things out.

What we propose is to try increasing the roundstart range between the characters, so that it’s harder for volatile teams to begin their gameplan to two-touch-kill. Sure, it will be a buff to zoners, but not a very big one, their gameplay will be unchanged, since they can already easily retreat from roundstart positions.

When players are already actively playing neutral, two touches seem much more fair, since both players had their chance to outmanoeuvre and outsmart each other. Giving both players a chance to play is a very important theme for Skullgirls design.

Currently, we lean towards making changes that push things towards three touches

Switching from two-touch meta to three touch will drag the matches on, especially for non-competitive players. Mr. Bors runs tournaments in the Russian community. It's very common for beginner matches to drag on, because they don’t know optimal combos and punishes. Giving more health for everyone will guarantee that timeouts are going to be much more common, across all skill levels.

Another thing is increasing health values might not help with survival, since even if defender has a bit of health left, attacker can lab out a “checkmate” setup to chip player out or force a reversal\dhc and punish accordingly. Sure, it will give the defender a chance, but a very slim one.

And let’s not forget about characters like Fukua, who are designed to excel at mixups, but not so much at damage. And if such characters need 4-5 touches in an average game, that number might increase to 6-7, if you would raise the overall health. This means that one mistake is going to be much more costly for Fukua.

Let’s not forget about metergain! Most two-touch teams have excellent metergain, this definitely needs to be looked into.

DHC scaling
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.

Reducing the DHC unscale value might be a good way to balance things out. Not dying from two touches, but still being under the opponent’s pressure is a good outcome for both players.

We agree that reducing the DHC scaling value might get rid of some two touch combos, but more often than not players can achieve that without DHCs with right starters and assists. Be wary of that.

Adding specific override rules for DHC would complicate the mechanic, and without clear indication that some DHCs are different from others, it might make things very confusing.

Zoners would definitely benefit from increased health and whatever new unscaling formula is, since their damage is scaled anyway due to multihits. The game doesn’t need zoning to be more oppressive, and zoners to be even more slippery.

Max undizzy loops + damage.

Max undizzy combos aren’t really an issue (unless it’s Beowulf, but that’s his thing, I guess). Max undizzy already gives defender lots of benefits: more meter, less damage received, more drama. The damage definitely adds up when the defender guesses wrong or when the defender doesn’t do anything, but that’s very much intentional, no? Attacker must keep up with pressure, deal much less damage, fish for counterhits and burst baits. Both attacker and defender are still playing two-player game, both risk something and gain something, both must make decisions. Currently, it’s a good balance for everyone. Max undizzy combos aren’t something that needs to be fixed, especially when proposed changes are, frankly, not good.

Applying even harsher combo scaling. It's 50% right now, it could be as low as 20%!

Harsher combo scaling and additional meter gain feels like a reasonable thing to do, but at the same time it feels like a straight buff to defenders without forcing any meaningful decision from them. Why do anything, when you’re taking even less damage and gaining even more meter than before? If this new scaling gets implemented, it would be good if the attacker isn’t penalized too much. It’s important to understand that attacker still takes a risk during a mixup; punishing an attacker for doing mixups isn’t the way to address this issue.

Immediately starting combo stages at stage 3.

Starting combo at stage 3 feels like an arbitrary complication of stage mechanics. Lots of new people still struggle to grasp how and when stages change and what triggers IPS and Undizzy bursts, and this will complicate things even more. Sure, it forces the attacker to do more resets, but at the same time it might severely limit max undizzy routes for some characters who don’t need this kind of nerf. Its REALLY noticeable for Fukua since she is constantly edge dancing near full UD while vortexing, and sometimes strike/throw characters like Double/Annie when they need to squeeze just a bit more out of opponent before they finally have to let go if they cant kill.

Giving players access to super gold bursts

This is already in Beta. SGB keep the undizzy and are fully invul, which means that nothing is stopping players from mashing buttons every time they see a burst spark. New burst feels atrocious, it goes against the whole game design of Skullgirls: it rewards player who mashes buttons, while attacker must stop doing whatever they were doing dead in their track. There’s no risk to Super Gold Burst, it can’t even be burst baited, which is such an important part of the game. We seriously hope you reconsider adding this mechanic in the first place, it removes a huge part of both attacking and defending during max undizzy.

Another thing to point out that SGB will be super confusing for new players. Current burst mechanic works somewhat simple: there are three types of sparks: blue, red and gold. Blue and red indicate undizzy and IPS respectively, while gold spark means that you can burst and your burst will be fully invincible (it registers for projectiles and after 90f of any spark). There are just two types of burst: blue burst means your burst didn't hit the opponent, while gold burst means you're invincible. Simple, somewhat. What new beta brings is two gold sparks and two gold burst that are visually indistinguishable from each other AND do different things. Now we have three bursts: blue, gold, gold. Four sparks: green, red, gold and gold. It's complicating things that are already obtuse for players.

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 cooldowns definitely should stay as they are, we completely agree. Assist lockout cooldown can be experimented with, but we don’t think it’s a big issue as some might claim it to be. Pulling assists on longer cooldowns will hurt the pacing of the game without changing too much to make a difference. And, as you mentioned, zoners will, again, be buffed tremendously by this change.

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.

Complicating things with different cooldowns from physical and projectile hits can solve this issue, but assists already have different adjustments to cooldowns, move properties, invincibility, etc. Adding another layer of complexity might not be worth it.

I think we will experiment with assists always scaling to 66%, CH or not.

Assist hits that give 66% scaling regardless of CH is an interesting experiment, but I don’t think it would change how people use the strongest assists and how big the reward from them are. Big Band will still send you away fullscreen from a Brass, Big Band and Annie will still allow you to combo off a DP without any issues, Robo’s Beam will halt your movement, Bella and Eliza will still keep you in place with multihits. Additional scaling will not fix strong assists, since their main attraction isn’t always damage, but resource building, mixup opportunities, keepaway, defence, stagger pressure, etc. And let’s remember that single hit assists will still do good damage, while multi-hits will scale regardless. We feel like additional damage scaling might be a placebo instead of a cure.

DP assists in general need to be toned down, since they do everything: invulnerable, stop pressure, instantly turn the tides, act as a stop sign that everyone must respect. They solve the neutral, but at the same time, it’s hard to compete without DP assists against some teams.

What we need is to have a discussion about problematic assists, those that do everything and especially solve neutral. These are a few in numbers (H Beam, H Pillar, H Brass, etc), but everyone knows about them, everyone uses them, they create the meta and discourage from experimenting with other assists.

Any global changes to assist mechanics will hurt meta-assists less, just because of their utility. There are two solutions to this: nerf the specific meta-assists or do something with universal mechanics to fight assists regardless of their functionality.

* Idea #1: Snapping the assist now puts it on an extremely large cooldown. (Or even locking out the assist entirely until certain conditions are met). This mechanic exists now, but it’s not really worth using. Maybe ramping up the reward to absurd levels (and tweaking it later) will help dealing with meta assists?

* Idea#2: Assist lockout on punish increased across the whole cast. This will make DP assists and armor assists a bit weaker, since they can be thrown out much more than other niche assists in neutral.

Squigly

It feels like she’s in a good place, we agree, even though there are some quirks with her hitboxes and hurtboxes after all these years. It’s her thing, it's probably fine, everyone is accustomed to her hijinx during scrambles.

Plenty of her combos require microdashing and microwalks to do light confirms, sometimes characters will fall out of her combos just because of a couple of pixels. It’s hard to replicate though.

What Squigly definitely needs is a clear indicator when she has her charges up. Take your eyes off screen for one second, and you’re forced to guess whether she has the full charge to instantly end your pressure and neutral. Imagine a situation where you’re high up in the air, like PW, Para or Robo, and you can’t clearly see what Squigly’s doing down on the ground because of the camera. You’ll have to guess if she has charge or not. We know that Skullgirls UI is difficult to work with and that the overall idea is to have as few additional indicators at UI as possible, but can at least something be done? Coloured flame or wind effects, eye glow, additional particles, something?

Further ideas are provided by one and only Bigtonney from Italian community!

- LK and MK divekick are practically the same move, the only gameplay relevant difference being MK dive does let you followup while LK dive hardly works. LK dive is a valid frametrap reset tool, it has its uses, but at least some angle adjustment wouldn’t hurt.

- Reduce the knockback of jhk to allow every version of divekick to connect after a restand (this mostly happens after jhp loops). jhk also tends to uncombo if used as air-to-air or in general against airborne opponents.

- Increase HK divekick launch height making 5lp or 5lk more lenient on the characters that require a microdash to connect.

- Give Serio Mortis a 3f buffer for normals, making combo into s.HP in the corner not a 1f link on some characters. (this is the only change i can think of without messing with the move's frame data or hitboxes, i guess.)

- Draugen Punch into MK+HK Opera connects on airborne opponents. (without changing the first hit hitbox of SBO or making lv1 dp knock down i'd suggest to make it send the opponent higher so it would get caught by the super. super annoying to get the dp to antiair deep enough to be able to super cancel and not getting the followup.)
Example:

SUGGESTIONS

- Make Seria Chord super cancelable on block. this should make Chord more appealing against zoning.The cancel window should be from startup until it makes contact with the point character,the recovery part wouldn't still be cancelable. (I know this is extreme, but it would still cost 1 bar to cancel into Opera, and you would spend the charge.)

- Slightly increase 2lp hitbox. It’s not really a move to stagger with, it has slow framedata for a normal, but very good disjoint hitbox and long active frames. Extending a disjointed hitbox could really turn it into an excellent checking button.

Big Band

There’s plenty of problematic stuff with Big Band: disgusting damage in scramble situations, big invincible supers that delete your team off one mistake, crossunder Brass into SSJ being extremely hard to block, etc. He’s pretty instrumental in every single issue that’s currently plaguing the game (DP meta, ToDs and two-touches). Not sure if he needs large swaths of nerfs, since that’s just what kind of character he is, but toning him down just a little bit would do good for the game.

Something definitely needs to be done with parry and OSs. Big Band gets too much from a successful parry and dishes out tremendous damage just by existing. Having OSs that do everything for you on wakeup and incoming shouldn’t be on a character like Big Band, who already has some of the best reversals in the game. The balance beta already shortened parry window by two frames, but this might not be a substantial change to make a difference.

SSJ doesn’t have to be fully invulnerable. Big Band already has tons of ways to get people off him no matter what. Replacing invulnerability with armor would at least give the attacker a way to open up Big Band on wakeup without losing half their health and whole momentum. SSJ has armor, it will still act as a great reversal. Big Band has a dedicated invulnerable DP and a parry - plenty of strong options that gives him ways to make a comeback from lost neutral game. He’s already good at neutral to have such strong defence.

Crossunder Brass into SSJ being unblockable post-flash feels disgusting, not in a good way.

Brass has been a meta-defining assist for a long time. I feel like it should have reduced hitstop on block, as well as additional lockout, similar to what H Beam got.

Eliza

Sekhmet must be toned down or tuned in some way, risk\reward is heavily in favour of Eliza mindlessly wailing on buttons, while the opponent has only one strong solution to her shenanigans: block, pushblock and pray she backs off. Some characters don’t have tools to get Sekhmet off them and punish accordingly: snapping is finicky due to Sekhmet being small and being able to backdash. Sweep is extremely risky and more often than not not worth it. Scourge being invincible and post-flash unblockable forces defender to take big risks for little reward. Punishing Sekhmet with a throw is the most common way to deal with her, but due to damage scaling and throws not being universal, Eliza is still a winner, even if she loses a bunch of health.

Still, Sekhmet could still feel fair if their toolkit is adjusted. Currently Sekhmet halts the game every time they are out and removes most interaction options from defender.

In general, all the proposed changes seem really good. Sekhmet’s rework needed more tuning, and now’s the right time to do so. It’s not fun to play against and doesn’t lead to meaningful interactions between players. Beta definitely pushed Eliza in the right direction!

Ms. Fortune

Proposed changes seem to be reasonable. Lots of stuff in the new beta update addresses most of the issues, good job!

Head lockout changes are a bit too harsh, making headless neutral way sluggier than it needs to be.


Peacock

Peacock got hit hard, damn. New beta changes need more testing, they definitely address most of complaints, but it also could be a bit too much.


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.

Point PW buffs shouldn’t automatically mean that DHC Install should be nerfed. Fake anchor PW is a very situational thing in teams, other characters can get plenty of damage and two-touch opponents without a “bad” character that has difficult combos with specific routing, inconsistent confirms across the whole cast. Nerfing install means nerfing rare teams and a rare character. PW in general needs consistency, she isn’t going to become stronger from fixing random combo drops and bad hitboxes.

She’s in dire need of QoL changes to her entire toolkit, this list is definitely not all-encompassing, mostly made by Mr. Bors.

QoL propositions:
  1. Her hitconfirm game relies entirely on a slow low attack that’s not always comboable into buer or 6HK. 2LK in general is bad because of lack of good chains, pushback and 5HP not comboing into buer at long distances. 2lk comboing into 6hk can alleviate some of tough long-range confirms. HK is a multi-hit that ensures that combo will be scaled. It also requires OTG to convert and it’s unsafe on block, which means PW must use flight cancel to make herself safe, making this option easier to deal with for the opponent.
  2. Make Buer more consistent in combos on all characters at various ranges. Taller and longer hitboxes would do the job, currently it’s a nightmare to combo into Buers not point blank and on falling characters, especially on Bella and Fortune. You need various routings for different situations that kill your damage and make undizzy go up.
  3. Lots of stings don’t work at long ranges, forcing PW either to guess or go for a harder route..
    1. 2lk, 5hp x L Buer whiffs at long ranges
    2. 2lk, 2MP x 5HP x L Buer whiffs at medium ranges
    3. Any 2MP hit can whiff at max range due to every hit having pushback.
      1. This means chaining from 5LK or 2LK into 2MP is not reliable.
      2. Example video
      3. Here’s an old chart of basic confirms that shows how bad s.HK and cr.MP are.
        https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c_XFRCv81WPZoK8-x_AvXtajIpIDjr9F-3KYh5Ip8go/edit?usp=sharing
  4. 5HK is a horrendous button that doesn’t work anywhere except point blank. It's extremely short range makes it impossible to combo on certain characters from certain strings. Point blank cr.MPx4 s.HK just whiffs of Bella because of pushback and banana hurtboxes, forcing you to always do three hits on her. Umbrella and Squigly are especially problematic.
    1. It’s a 3-hit launcher that chains from medium buttons, but doesn’t guarantee to connect anywhere except point blank.
  5. Slow and short light normals can be an issue at times. OTG confirms sometimes are not very reliable, because only 2lk hits a large area, and her fastest punish being a normal throw feels bad. I understand that buffing range and framedata might make those normals too good, but something needs to be done. If the idea that her throw is her best punish - why not make it a little bit better? 2LK is the only reliable light OTG button and it’s very slow.
  6. Deathcrawl hitbox could be taller, so characters won't just fall through it in some situations, like DHCs or when OTG is spent. It won’t make a big difference to her defensive options, but it would definitely make her more consistent.
  7. Increase snap hitbox vertically so it’s more reliable against air opponents.
  8. LVL3 having throw invul frames covering the startup up until the first active attack frame. Having to spend three bars on a reversal just to get grabbed by a normal throw sucks.

Improvements and buffs:

  1. 6HK and 2MP pulling characters in on block or hit. 6HK is mostly used for max range confirms and not much else. It’s worth looking into this normal and give PW some additional usage. Maybe manually delaying hits could result in guaranteed frame traps? 2MP is mostly fine, but it definitely has it’s issues.
  2. Faster armor startup on lights. Not frame 1, but it would be interesting to experiment with shaving off a frame or two from armor startup. There’s an issue, though: plenty of people find it hard to do armor moves without accidental additional startup. Would this make this issue even worse?
  3. Increasing 2HK armor from 2 hits to three. I get it, it’s a strong move: low, can combo after, beats armor, but giving it three armor hits will make her consistent with other heavies, in addition to making it a better option against consecutive strikes with armor, like Big Band’s LVL1 or cancels into armor specials. Another thing to note that plenty of players are confused when they find out the hard way that it’s two hits of armor, instead of three, like other heavy buttons.
  4. Hatred Install being something more than DHC tool. I like current HI, but I wish there would be more incentive to use it as a desperation mode. She doesn’t gain much to help her in neutral when done raw. She isn't Annie, who can bombard you with stars and approach safely, she isn't Robo, who's already excellent at zoning and closing distance. Even with Install PW has to get risky and do everything with caution, since her gameplan stays exactly the same outside combos.
  5. Charged nails as assists could be an interesting experiment. Peacock has charged assists, why not her?

As for your propositions:
  1. Nail storage idea is fun, yes!
  2. New Hatred Guard adjustments? If she gets better with more hits she armors through - I’m all for it. It’s a fun proposition, and should be experimented with.
    1. Armor damage could be reduced from 100 percent to 75 or 50 percent.
    2. Armoring several hits (3 or 5, for example), gives her one-time use of an improved special: buer, just like with Hatred Install: no damage scaling, additional hitstun effect; nails charge faster. Supers are unaffected.
    3. Permanent buffs to movement tools, like flight speed or amount of flight cancels based on hits or damage armored? Just throwing it out there.

Filia

Filia is in a good spot! There are a couple things that can be tweaked, however:

Certain characters fall out of BnB.
Disclaimer: routes shown are just an example of more egregious jHK adc jLK jHP jHK chain behaviour and not exclusive to the shown examples only. In other words, it will drop under circumstances you’re not able to control if you use this chain in real match against those characters and is never truly consistent no matter how hard you gaslight yourself into thinking its stable, filia mains. I’m sick of this shit and you should be too. -Ranger.
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1713036772857.png

Tetris never looked so inappropriate.

Ringlet spike could use a small buff. It’s hard to record a good example, but generally enemy characters can dash right past ringlet before it becomes active. Visually it looks like ringlet should hit, but actual hitboxes don’t reach the enemy. Would asking for a slightly wider hitboxes or faster startup of active frames be too much of a change?
1713036865890.png

That right side is free real estate.
Cerebella

In general, talking about Cerebella as a “dedicated grappler of the game” really hurts her balance discussions. Skullgirls is a team game with wild characters, high tempo and pacing. Restricting her toolkit without giving something to her average neutral feels like unfair nerfs that she didn’t need. This is in regard with constant discussion about if Bella should have an overhead option or not, or if jHP should be dedicated overhead or not.

Stuff below is mostly by Ranger!

jHP should remain as an overhead in one way or another, since if you let Bella in range - she deserves her reward - a mixup. Low\grab mixup that is consistent with classic grappler playstyle is just bad in SG, so limiting Bella options to low/throw in her optimal range cuts her offence greatly with her already having some of the toughest matchups this game has to offer. It's true that j2MP replaced jHP in the overhead role, but it's so much significantly worse in comparison - uses otg, inconsistent combo stage, tough to confirm sometimes. It generally became just a worse option to have in a world where every option should matter.

As of new beta changes, I’m pretty happy with the jHP and j2MP change - it's so much better and provides so much for Bella now, making her point blank scare machine ever again, which she should always remain. jHP glide overhead is also very useful in delayed air pressure and cheeky restand resets so it now has its purpose enhanced besides “get off me and also right to the corner” move, so basically it's now how its used to be in the good old days, while j2MP taking on a role of proper overhead option. The only thing I’ve noticed after using it for some time is that bounce could use some very slight momentum towards Bella so 5MP starter doesn't whiff when it visually should have hit, but not strong enough for 2MK to connect as that would’ve been perhaps a bit too strong of a starter outside of corner.

Currently MGR has no otg (pink bounce) like her other cmd grabs, crippling your reward immensely by forcing you do bad starters on outliers like PW (stuff like microdash 2LP 2MK doesn't work on her, forcing you to do 2LK 2MP 2HP jxLP routes - bad combo and reset capitalization, on a character which is a nightmare MU and practically requires you to grab her lol) or doing microdash 5/2LP 2MK which is still a tough link on some characters. OTG state would allow you to have same confirms but you can actually normalize it across the cast by doing actual dash low confirm (it would also improve spacing for 2MK runstop resets, which she still gets anyway, but now with more optimised drama usage)

Grab bag should have a consistent otg state when whiffed, for a consistent punish. Currently it may work as unintentional makeshift beo arm sweep or band jHK ground tech, its this awkward to punish sometimes.

Pummel horse into 2MP against PW should work consistently. PW has reeling hurtboxes, which cause 2MP to whiff.

Reflect has some odd and arbitrary exceptions to what can be reflected and what is cannot. I’d like to see it rectified or at least explained why some de facto projectiles aren't reflectable, like point Beo H chair or Eliza throne (and band h step too if it ever comes to that again). Having every Bella tool work in some of her toughest matchups can indirectly make her other tools stronger by introducing an extra way of approaching neutral/guess game.

9GHWM8PfD3eagnVIEHmW5jksmkgRSQvEjt0eTQ_DmQww5u17b8n-KMpHV5825RUveoCn0mK1rLJpIcIJJbMAhWg8GBblhPOfHlLBXsu-SGQ0axBBbsXc7LmYcTqTWLuXn0MEcOIT4vW4DHqHdBhR8Ro

Not absurd at all.
Valentine

Hope people will be vocal about Valentine’s inconsistencies, she definitely needs some love in that regard. Stuff below is mostly by Ranger!

Bypass needs to be fixed, it’s a long lasting issue that plagues Valentine at high level. Even if it somehow manages to buff her, it’s still worth looking into. Valentine players already know how to mix with her, stacking as many bypasses in combo as possible. Giving her a couple more resets or combo routes won’t change much.

Orange vials can be annoying, but vials have very specific risk\reward behind them. Their usage isn’t guaranteed outside of combos, they require certain assists to load up freely, they are hard to use for solo Val, where she has to risk gaining a vial in neutral or give up damage and go for hard knockdown. If vials are to be nerfed, maybe assists that enable them (Excellebella, Salt Grinder, Take-A-Train) should be a point of investigation. Also, shifting risk/reward of certain vials affects the special as a whole, it also introduces a possibility of putting part of the special obsolete and forcing Val players to limit themselves to more “meta” options in order to adjust, which is never fun. In other words, please don’t attempt anything drastic when it comes to vial balancing - it's a very fine tuned special and fun one to use, regardless of team composition and style of play, so taking part of it may affect the whole thing in a bad way.

Orange vial was slightly nerfed as a tradeoff for numerous buffs/qol changes Val received. While its insignificant and doesn't change its utility in any meaningful way, I still think my opinion above holds true and is even more valid than ever. Also please don't buff something as a leverage to nerf something in the future, because whole bypass discourse was very about that all the time while Val suffered from this inconsistency for years, and it kinda not a good look seeing this issue rectified like that. I hope I’m not the only one who sees it like that. Either address the design flaw of the special in question if you dislike it so much (i.e change orange to doing something else completely), or adjust the teams that allow this design flaw (for lack of better word) to show through. In broader words, by nerfing Cloud you nerfed all the other Vals out there, which I think is unwarranted approach. Other than that, QoL’s and buffs introduced are great and I wouldn’t even consider some of those which is very thoughtful and surprising, thanks!

Don’t forget about Mortuary Drop! It’s a useless tool, but maybe buffing it just a bit may make it not a meme? Give her the ability to pick a side where she drops the body, and if she’s close to the corner - give her a scaled combo via OTG or super? Or ground bounce and heavily scaled combo. Could be experimented with.

Parasoul

M and H Egret should definitely be improved as anti-zoning tools. Currently they barely change anything in her gameplan in neutral, both risky to throw out while at the same time not giving a good enough reward, if any at all. Parasoul's neutral is excellent, but Egrets aren't a big part of it, they are very much situational.

M Egret can last for longer, be wider and travel farther (though it might ruin some defensive applications against supers like robo’s cannon). Being able to absorb a hit and protect Parasoul could be an interesting experiment, though it can also be problematic (same frame interactions can be weird). M Egret can even hop several times, protecting her from projectiles in intervals, but at a cost of a long cooldown. There’s plenty of room to experiment!

Another thing to think about is to allow Parasoul to use two egrets at once. Egret restrictions currently feel like a handicap conceptually (egrets are a team, after all) and in gameplay.

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.
Can you be more specific? It wouldn’t be healthy for the game and Parasoul if she gains something similar to Dahlia auto mixup options, something that you need to hold every time she’s in your face.

Double
Her beta changes are great! Maybe give Flesh Step just a bit of additional projectile invulnerability, it's still tough to use against zoners. Distance of travel proportional to button strength could also be experimented with, though it might open new ways to mixup people.


Fukua

Stuff below is mostly by Ranger!

Fukua is in a weird spot currently. She has probably the best keepaway game alongside Valentine, insane vortex and good assists/dhc options. Everything in her kit screams danger, yet for some reason when I’m forced to go in I find myself awkwardly dancing around my opponent, unable to actually go in. And here the issues in her kit lie. Her air buttons, while being absolutely unparalleled in air contest, feel like the most awkward things to use when it comes to jumping in and establishing her low/throw game. jLP is great for A-t-A - short and easy to anti-air if used as a jump-in. jHK is fast and vacuums - doesn't hit overhead, and does not vacuum on crouchers consistently if at all sometimes, and there’s almost no reason in blocking it high, cause that's the only way it can “stick” to you reliably, so its prone to whiffing right where its susceptible to an anti-air. Cancelling into fireball after any of your jump in of choice can and almost always will switch sides but never will net you anything because its hitstun is not enough to even light confirm unless done very deep and low to the ground. High height fireball into falling button is quite tricky to press due to its fairly big(24f) recovery, so there’s no real threat of another overhead after fireball if Fukua decides to cycle falling button with fireball when above the opponent. Approaching by ground is severely limited because her normals are Filia normals, which are very stubby and short and not designed for pressure without Filia dash(both air and ground) movement in mind, so you’re limited to low commitment pokes when you’re in range.

Now for her mixup game she has low/hitgrab/high clones and command grabs, which should enable her upclose low/throw game with occasional overhead spiked in. And here is also where issues emerge. After “sticking in” in one way or another you’re right in opponents face and you have typical low/throw options with overhead shadow being interruptible if your opponent isn't sleeping. You could also delay jHK to catch pushblock attempt and punish their backdash, but if your opponent knows there’s no real threat in not pushblocking Fukua offence you’re bound to whiff it and get punished so I rarely choose this option. Lets see how reward for low/throw plays out, and why the opponent should be scared of low more than any of her grabs. Low scores Fukua her best vortexes and damage, while throwing/cmd grabbing the opponent gives you scaled stage 3 combo on top of her handicapped damage(her regular throw doesn't even do 1k like everyone else’s throw btw), having her use otg and meter to confirm midscreen, which leads to limited shadow use since M Shadow pickup has issues on catching opponent as it goes active before body collision box and travels with it (it sorta does feel like whiffed H bypass in this regard), which doesn't happen when otg is used up regularly (body is snatched from the ground). That leaves the player to manually time M Shadow release to juggle catch, which is prone to be dropped semi irregularly. It may sound like a skill issue, but stacking factors certainly are not in favor of this option, and should be considered by Fukua players. Doing shadowless confirm limits Fukua reset capabilities even further given she has poor air reset game. Low is low but knowing how highly reward is skewed towards it you really should expect low/overhead mixup, which is reactable if looked at. In other words, throw part of Fukua mixup isn't scary enough to be a threat which undermines the rest of her mixup game.

Maybe its not bad, can't have everything with kit like hers, but the problem is that Fukua kit in its current state incentivizes her to never take risks with her pressure as its fairly limited and bound only to punish opponent who goes too recklessly swinging air buttons at you, so you’re kinda stuck endlessly running away/stalling the game and focusing only on your opponent mistakes with occasional safe mixup when they let you in. And even then there’s shadow HP drain problem shows up, as it prevents you from both holding better keepaway game, better combos when you do get in(and every bit of damage matters for Fukua) and when you need to pre-set shadow for a way better mixup she usually does, limiting her health and scaling dps ratio even further towards either opponent or never risking yours in the first place.

In the end you have a killer with a spoon gameplan that is never fun to play against, and fairly awkward to deviate from as Fukua players themselves.

Suggestions

Nothing concrete that comes to mind besides some shadows and normals tweaks, but the general idea should be is that Fukua should stop being punished for using shadows both offensively and defensively, be it health drain or bad M shadow pickups w/o otg; her strike throw game evened out somehow (like buffing throw pickups - extend m shadow reach for an otg pickup after throw attempt, that would be the easiest balancing possible and one of the meaningful ones);

Her LVL5 is currently a gimmick super. Maybe it can be turned into a full-fledged LVL1 command grab super? Scale down the damage to regular command throw damage levels, but retain stage and otg as it would still have LVL5 starter juggle. This would be another approach of Fukua having good “throw” side of strike/throw mixup, which would still require her to commit but gives more meaningful reward than her regular command throws. The irony of Fukua having typical grappler issues in neutral while having keepaway gameplan isn't lost on me.

M Shadow in combos could use some improvements both in initial placement and behaviour:
Situation where H Drill in combos moves shadow too far to connect afterwards, could be fixed by increasing threshold to what shadow considers a screen edge before start dragging behind during combos only or otherwise;
M Shadow travels with character collision boxes, never grabbing it (both player held/unheld cases), could be fixed by modifying shadow spawn point after HK normals in combos, moving it further back/forward to achieve needed stability or make shadow move through character until it reaches (h bypass fix method?);
M Shadow whiffing on Squigly in the corner, could be fixed by something above;

Extend 5LK and 5LP hitstun by a couple of frames for easier restand into 2MK, and in turn give last hit of 2MK same hitstun as Filia 2MK or something similar, currently its hitstun is too short for comfort;
Extend jHK hitbox downwards for it to connect on crouchers more leniently at at least point blank nj use;

It is important to note that the second and third shadow in a combo, if used to reset and start another combo, will scale the combo greatly.
While I understand that Fukua vortex is great, isn't punishing her for doing it right kinda incentivizes her stalling game somewhat? If she can’t kill reliably even with subpar damage as an offset that’s bad for Fukua stock.

No HP drain on shadows is already a HUGE improvement for Fukua, I hope you still have something for her in store!

Beowulf

Does Beo need a standing low? He has plenty of mix with other buttons.

Horizontal air blitzer can randomly crossup because of enemies’ hitboxes bobbing up and down during backwards walking animation, as well as differences between walking backwards and forwards. Without preblock, animation cycle continues and a few pixels start to make a difference. The same can happen with diagonal blitzers when it comes to hitbox interactions. Free crossups should come from reads, not from luck. Not sure if anything can be done with it.

Beowulf still feels like he has to rely on assists like Take a Train or Excellebella after all these years of balancing. They give him damage, meter, space control, hype, good conversions from stray hits and reversals. They are cornerstone to his game, but we don't know if anything can be done with that without drastically changing how Beo and his assists of choice work.

On a side note, why can’t Bella deflect the H chair? Every other character treats it as a projectile, even Umbrella can deflect it, albeit it has little use. Bella already struggles against Beowulf, giving her an option to deflect the chair would make Beo respect her just a little bit.

Robo-Fortune

Glad H beam assist is getting addressed again, added lockout and limited hit count is a good change imo.

L Danger low profiling standing normals on wake up or during neutral poking and in scrambles - isn’t it a bit uncalled for? Finally getting an opening after chasing robo for so much and having a read on potential saw use only to get thrown away and even comboed afterwards feels soul crushing in tough matchups Robo so easily provides for a big part of the roster. Can it be tuned into more dedicated role as an AA along with 2lp and not serve as a makeshift reversal?

Maybe it's finally time for another round of install tweaks? Currently it's kinda boring/weird imo. You get pricy safe cancel out of sticky situations and fullscreen L beam into magnet confirms with occasional fullscreen beam spam until you turn into suicide bomber. Sounds great, but at the same time it kinda narrows its effective utility to those things only. If you try to zone while moving around you have to twist your muscle memory since double jump is switched for air dash, and laser combos while flashy and actually very cool, are super unstable thanks to jL beam unstable bounce. If you begin your combo by going into install immediately, you’re forced to go into another bar since timer leaves you with more than enough time before you finish even the slowest combo, so you can't cash it out this way, and if you let them loose you’re in downtime forced to get heads to recharge in order to prevent explosion. So if you wanna try to use it in more sophisticated way you have to learn so much for so little, which leaves it a bit lackluster/wasted fun factor/potential in my opinion. Maybe balancing it into actual super zoning time plus something crazy fun (I’m thinking Justice Omega Shift from +R, but not that memey) and away from one trick pony use could make it more interesting and add another layer to Robo zoning? She’s already annoying enough, you can only go up from here.
Umbrella

Looking forward to new beta changes that are scheduled for Umbrella on Monday!

There’s a trend in new characters: mixup with a press of one button. 5hk is is a crossup hitgrab that’s often very hard to punish and react to (not to mention that sometimes you don’t know if it’s actually going to hit or not). Not sure if anything could or should be done about it, but it sure is a frustrating button.

Her j.MK float is quite weak against zoning. It’s not very long, she can’t spring up in the air like Parasoul with tear explosions, her hurtbox is pretty big and she can’t tech after falling down like Beowulf, making it a poor mobility option. Sure, she has medium bubble jump, but it takes time to set up and makes her predictable. In general, j.MK feels mostly worthless.

In general, Umbrella struggles a lot against zoners, since all of her anti-zoning tools are useless against teleports, double jumps, anything that travels low to the ground. Her command grab is risky and slow most of the time, supers are mostly useless against Peacock and Robo, who can just avoid any area with reflective shield or bubbles. 5HP reflect is useless and hard to time properly. Her mobility options are either slow or require a bubble, which is extremely hard to setup against zoners. Slurp n Slide is nice, but it begs to have some sort of armored version, using it as an approach tool against a zoner is tough.

Annie

Definitely glad that Annie will take a hit, since she’s the character that fits any team, and a character who does everything. Destruction Pillar getting nerfed is really good!

Star Power needs a rework, glad it's being experimented upon.

The idea of Crescent Cut being similar to Sol’s gunflame is cool: comes out fast and in trades you often lose. Some toning down might be needed, since Annie is really good in scrambles.

Black Dahlia

Mousetrap should be looked into, it has several issues. It’s a pseudo reversal and becomes active even if Dahlia is hit during startup. It deletes projectiles like Parasoul’s shots, even though visually they don’t touch each other. The trap conceptually looks like a tool for spacing control, not zoning or scramble tool.

Dahlia, just like Umbrella, has a mixup normal that can be chained into. It turns blockstrings into safe mixup that can be strengthened by an assist. This approach makes characters with technical tools (PW, for example) and command normals somewhat obsolete.

Counter is strong. It's very fast, can hit from behind, works on assists and removes armor. It feels overwhelming to deal with at times, but we understand that Dahlia needs a reversal. Still, it could be tuned just a bit to make it more punishable on correct guess.

Misc

We understand that these are not related to balance, that these changes might not be in the budget, but it's important to acknowledge that there's plenty to improve when it comes to UX and visuals.

- There are plenty of features multiplayer could benefit from. QM during training, QM having a lobby system, similar to AC+R, where you can see every current player, spectate their matches and wait for specific opponents to respond. Ranked system is useless in Skullgirls, not sure why leaderboards even exist nowadays. It would be nice to have a proper Ranked system, again, similar to AC+R.

- Please look into turning Replay Theater into a fully fledged feature! And if it would have a replay takeover - that would be fantastic.

- Is there a way to make Player 2 choose the arena mid-set, instead of it always being Player 1?

- Is it possible to add a function to disable palettes so that they are replaced with standard ones? Some palettes cause physical pain to the eyes (Squigly's 16; Double's 9, 29, Painwheel's 7, Eliza's 24, etc)

- New Parasoul’s Makima palette (30) has a dark red core for tears which hurts its readability in darker arenas.

ReHn0moAQq58Jv9lfCoWTtUCAlipXum0G5XSIRE4GnCTpyNOC4_l6XUY7vRbPnnxb3cUhopbSc1YypHOCyugTfa6PI6LLeP_bmK5drX9YczVQAtZt4C5ILIlmrSPtUgJwrwi2bc4Qugh8_giKWuGNYY


- Alternative Marie stage should be out of default arena pool - there's an epilepsy and seizure warning on game start, why would you have to follow it through? Same goes for Boss Marie stage, even after tweaking it in the past, it's still a visual mess. Also a launch option to make epilepsy warning skippable, as well as intro?

- Why do you need to hold button to skip epilepsy warning, but have to tap numerous buttons to skip company names and intro? Why not make one consistent universal input?

- Is it possible to make it so that a person in the lobby who has finished playing (only playing, not watching) a match does not have to press “ready” again?

- Extra training options:
1. Enhance the ability to quick set characters position on holding directions upon entering training mode:
2. Currently you can pick a corner by holding direction - add up and down input to that so you can also choose where the character is facing - you’re cornered/cornering. (AC+R already has it, who would have thought)
3. Add option for dummy to delay pushblock by a set amount of frames.
4. Add stage name to a replay info in replay theater.
5. May be a long shot, but remake training mode menu UI so you don't have to scroll endlessly for an option you need? I know there's a select button which opens the last tweaked option, but what if I constantly tweak things? And the ones being tweaked are spread all over, so you kinda have to scroll anyway.
6. Combo record and sharing system, akin to Them Fighting Herds?

- Flashing icon when you're alt-tabbed out of the game whenever you are matched in QM, similar to what ggac+r does.

- Replacing combo trials with actually useful combos might be amazing for new players.

- Graphical touch up would be nice.
1. Stage backgrounds and NPC sprites often have white dots shimmering constantly, certain stages have white seams in certain places (Umbrella's stage is especially bad). Not sure if this is because of how the game is rendered or some hardware specific issue, but it's definitely not unnoticeable for many. Examples:

gif - Google Drive

drive.google.com drive.google.com
2. Bringing up character sprites to 1080p would be cool, but I'm aware that this idea was rejected in the past. Maybe now's the time to look into it again?
3. Is there something that can be done with color banding on the edges of characters (not sure how to call it, see spoiler for details) ? It's probably an engine thing with how sprites are lit and built, but with modern monitors it's more and more noticeable.
test5.png

That's that. Special thanks to Ranger, Gone2Heaven, Krekky, Vergil in a plastic chair, Alpaca Cake, Memzuka, ImpDi, Bigtonney and Ippolit!
 
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jD+MP (Unbreakable Elbow) no longer floor bounces when done as an instant overhead, but now always starts in "IPS Combo Stage 1", and it now has a 5F buffer into light normals after it finishes to help with confirms.

All of the things I asked for? You spoil me!

But yeah this is great. Sometimes getting IPS stage 3 starter was really stinky, and she never needed the 9999 damage groundbounce starter.

As per my last post though, if people lament the loss of groundbounce in combos then I wouldn't be against bringing it back for opponents already in hitstun

Pummel Horse now leaves Cerebella a bit closer to the victim, to help with some confirms on some characters.

Yes!!! No more Pummel 2MP being fake/interactable against Painwheel.
 
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3.7.1 is live!

store.steampowered.com

Skullgirls 2nd Encore - Beta Mode Update [4/15/2024] - Steam News

Hello, Today's update focuses on bug fixing and tuning from the last update, and introducing a fairly substantial "rework" for Umbrella. SYSTEM Fixed a bug where characters would take no chip damage during the last frame of a Pushblock, and attackers would behave as if the hit did not connect...
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com

Another issue I found (beyond the known issues mentioned in the update notes) is that the extra recovery after placing Lenny isn't working correctly. However, I don't mind that, since the start up is now always increased which is the main change. It stops her from having a 4F start up into a reversal DHC like SSJ, etc.

BANG! (M) into Lenny is now -31 on block instead of -41, which is still plenty unsafe IMO.

(((For the nerds: The extra Lenny recovery doesn't work because it's relying on an uninitialized variable. Depending on what things you do before using Lenny that also interact with that variable, you may accidentally trigger the extra recovery, whoops.)))
 
Hello, I don't know if this was an intended subproduct of the new lenny recovery, but H Bang x3 into Lenny into Argus no longer works in beta

 
FuLLBLeeD said:
No, no, no and absolutely not. I will die on this hill.

Being able to make the opponent guess for TWO CHARACTERS for one bar was never healthy for the game. I really struggle to think of anything with more skewed risk reward than old Lenny's HBD ability. This is in the realm of fortune instant head cooldown and old Fukua M shadow levels of "do thing for zero risk, get rewarded and win the game" in terms of what decisions you are making in neutral versus the reward you are actually getting. Peacock has dodged normalization for far too long, and Lenny no longer easily carry two characters to the corner is something Peacock players are just going to have to route around. This might be the single most meaningful and healthy nerf to Peacock besides the george nerf.
You are completely and objectively correct on this metric, from earliest days did I say if peacock needed to be nerfed in any capacity, this actual comical level deletion that no other character is capable of doing should be the first to go

we are lucky it's staying even in the form of built-around team building

as for the other stuff

Mbang and Lenny -> Just make it uniform frame data wise and decide what it should and shouldn't do, put the foot down for this combo, no variables for something like this, in the beta bracket there were moments I did Mbang Lenny on hit and peacock just straight up FROZE while I was "buffering" my next inputs like please, it's too volatilely inconsistent for fast paced play

Mbang being shit is good because it means peacocks need better fundamentals on defense

I'm not really sure what Lenny is good for besides extra damage but thats fine cause I don't use lenny, kudos on that visual update

Bomb dissipation is a genius compromise although I thought the first set of values we're fine



ROBO H BEAM
Please actually revert this nerf, go a different route, add 20 more frames to her recovery AGAIN, make the scaling garbage, but those 2 extra hits are WORLD shattering


There's like a whole lexicon of resets and interesting character-displacing vortex's that just do not work now, and split second decisions from the last beta bracket actually blew up in my face crazily

https://clips.twitch.tv/CoyPrettyGullYee-GMMnbKLA8AyIMXq5

Robo's point game was garbage because she was strong at making your team's sum strength greater, just let it be strong like the other strong assists we have (Looking at brass)




I dont play fortune but i've played AGAINST fortune and honestly feels like we hit her too hard, idk so I abstain on putting my hat in, but from a competitive spirit I could've existed in a world where she wasn't touched
 
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I'm absolutly loving the Pummel Horse change implemented today. I know this might be a stretch, but is it possible to do something similar with MGR?
 
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New Umbrella is sick. I do have some ideas though with this new rework.

IF the opponent is in hitstun BEFORE ravenous happens and the bar is slowly approaching ravenous, I would like bubbles to still come out or work. It feels really bad to be in the middle of a combo and then go for bubble but you JUST crossed into the Ravenous threshold and now you get nothing and you die for it. Maybe you could make the actual summon animation do something interesting in Ravenous, but i DO say it feels weird that she can't do that.

I also have another suggestion for Ravenous, as I found myself not wanting to be in it at all as I feel Satiated and Overstuffed are a bit superior:

Since she feels like she's meant to play forward with it, I think it'd be interesting if her charge moves while in Ravenous are no longer charged as a compensation for not being able to control neutral or pressure with bubbles. Since she lost crMP as alow, it's really hard to stick to the opponent or get in. I think she's very very susceptible to pushblock and the meta assists even more now.

It also sucks getting hit while in Ravenous because the bar is going to keep draining, and then you're going to go into starving where I legitimately think she becomes the worst character in the game now. It's like legit impossible to get a hit on anybody while in starving.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to go into every mode and that there's SOME kind of benefit to be in either ravenous Overstuff or Satiated. I think it would be cool to consider giving Starving SOMETHING so that you can create a wave of Umbrella players that could be considered "STARVING" players now. The way some of the paces of the matches played out ESPECIALLY against some of the runaway characters, I found myself going into Ravenous and Starving when I don't want to, and then it legitimately feels like checkmate. I would really really REAAAAALLY like to see a reason being added to go into Starving that is substantial enough to keep up with her other modes, as she feels like a character in those.

Other than that @Liam think you knocked the new stuff out of the park so far and she's been a blast to play in this version of the game. I think we will see a bunch of Umby players dedicating time to different modes, and more importantly, she really feels like an SG character in almost all her modes.
 
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I made a wrong statement about the new lenny start up, so I deleted it. However, with all the hits to utility, can it have it's damage back? Especially now that it doesn't counter hit anymore.
 
Note, the 3.7.1 patch was prepared on Friday and was shipped without reading anything else in the thread since my last post about that Twitch stream. I am just catching up on everything now.

Afince said:
I agree with Iso about Robo-Fortune.
Personally, I'd like to see the head drone mine disappear while falling if she is hit with an air button. Right now you can hit her during startup but before the mine is fully active, but it is impossible to know whether you have timed this right and can continue hit her, or if you need to block again.
I might be misunderstanding you, but if the Headrone is moving around, the eyes have flashes, etc, it will always perform its attack. Either it receives the command does it, or you interrupt her in time (6F I believe) and it doesn't come out. I believe there should be no confusion about whether to press the attack or not if you see the Headrone responded to her command.

Mr. Bors said:
Two touches + DHC Scaling
As you can probably infer based on the implemented system changes, I don't plan on adjusting the overall pacing and feel of two touches across the board anymore, but I am looking at adjusting the most egregious examples, and when they are possible. (Ex: Off of a down back DP assist call, or specific characters).

Mr. Bors said:
* Idea #1: Snapping the assist now puts it on an extremely large cooldown. (Or even locking out the assist entirely until certain conditions are met). This mechanic exists now, but it’s not really worth using. Maybe ramping up the reward to absurd levels (and tweaking it later) will help dealing with meta assists?
I was looking into this a bit ago actually, but that lockout timer also gets set during a double snap which I would need to resolve. Without fixing that, it makes HBD combos that lead into a double snap more punishing than they already are, which I don't think is needed.

Mr. Bors said:
* Idea#2: Assist lockout on punish increased across the whole cast. This will make DP assists and armor assists a bit weaker, since they can be thrown out much more than other niche assists in neutral.
Currently the engine can't distinguish between projectile hits and physical hits as a global rule, so I need to move some data around if we're going to test this out, but it's still on my list to explore. I think a little bit longer lockout on physical hits against assists wouldn't be a bad thing to try.

Mr. Bors said:
New burst feels atrocious
Appreciate the thoughts - I'd love feedback from others on the new burst as well! Also just as a reminder Super Gold Burst already existed when getting hit with a long burst bait sequence, or when setting off IPS using command grabs, so it's not entirely new. I understand where you're coming from about there being zero risk for taking it when the opportunity arises, but the attacker is explicitly giving the defender the opportunity to use it every time the mechanic triggers.

Focusing on what happens when the Super Gold Burst triggers isn't the point, because you've already triggered the thing you shouldn't have - it's focusing on what happens to the gameplay when players are actively avoiding it. Is that gameplay of doing resets at max undizzy that are NOT a 50/50 between burst bait / air throw (losing the character if you are wrong) better gameplay and more interesting for players? Where players go for resets that are high / low / throw / cross-up where reversal options are on the table for example? Maybe just launch them and let Undizzy drain so they can win neutral again and go for a big combo after? That's the puzzle I'm looking to answer. If players prefer to have the option of looping each other at 240+ Undizzy with that type of reset (especially as it's optimized further and further in 20XX for more teams) and find that to be a compelling experience, I could acquiesce!

There are also middle ground changes we could make to Super Gold Burst, like keeping Undizzy but still allowing it to be vulernable, so that it can still be baited, but for much lowered reward (I like that personally) or other changes beyond that.

Mr. Bors said:
We know that Skullgirls UI is difficult to work with and that the overall idea is to have as few additional indicators at UI as possible, but can at least something be done? Coloured flame or wind effects, eye glow, additional particles, something?
It is extremely time intensive to do things like make a character's eye glow, since I have to mark where that is on every frame by hand... but I'll see if something can be done. I think UI options are out of scope for this patch unfortuntely.

Mr. Bors said:
I’d like to see it rectified or at least explained why some de facto projectiles aren't reflectable, like point Beo H chair or Eliza throne (and band h step too if it ever comes to that again).
H Chair is probably so that she can't safe jump him easily by whiff cancelling something into reflector when it goes through his i-frames, if I had to guess. She doesn't need to be able to do that vs his reversal option. Chair is not considered a normal projectile since it has green hurtboxes, so it won't work on it just due to some engine quirks. H Step I don't recall, some balance decision I don't have context for, sorry.

Mr. Bors said:
more egregious [Filia] jHK adc jLK jHP jHK chain behaviour
I think if you figure out the timing required for each character this can be consistent, like knowing how to adjust Cerebella's (microdash if needed per character) cLP cMK jMP jHK restand to not drop. Also if your BNB drops on a partciular character to the point where it's inconsistent for you, then that's probably not a BNB you should be doing. That said, I know that drop well, maybe I'll adjust it, we shall see.

Also @Mr. Bors, I see there's other character feedback there too, I will return to it when I can and am focusing on those characters, as it's getting a bit later here tonight and I'd like to hit SEND on this post.

Mr. Bors said:
3. Is there something that can be done with color banding on the edges of characters (not sure how to call it, see spoiler for details) ? It's probably an engine thing with how sprites are lit and built, but with modern monitors it's more and more noticeable.
Happy to report that we've actually resolved that issue once and for all earlier this month, we're just doing some final polishes on it because it requires us to re-tweak all of the stage lighting a little bit. Hopefuly should be releasing soon!

Triviality said:
Mbang and Lenny -> Just make it uniform frame data wise and decide what it should and shouldn't do, put the foot down for this combo, no variables for something like this, in the beta bracket there were moments I did Mbang Lenny on hit and peacock just straight up FROZE while I was "buffering" my next inputs like please, it's too volatilely inconsistent for fast paced play
Well, it's been adjusted since then so let me know what your updated thoughts on it are. To be clear I want to remove the extra recovery that is mostly absent in the current 3.7.1 release patch (the -31 on block when cancelled from M Bang version) where it uses 99% of the same frame data in every situation. The only difference would be after hitting BANG! (M) and getting to do Lenny > Argus, but I think that could go too. I loathe these kind of exceptions but community... reactions... in the past have made me try and err towards leaving things the same for specific conversions / combos to avoid said reactions, haha.

Triviality said:
There's like a whole lexicon of resets and interesting character-displacing vortex's that just do not work now
As a fellow Beam assist enjoyer/abuser, I am completely unbothered if the fullscreen lockdown laser isn't as good at setting up powerful left rights personally.
Triviality said:
split second decisions from the last beta bracket actually blew up in my face crazily
My reaction to this clip was "oh the nerf did exactly what I wanted, this rules". Beam lasted so long you could load a vial off it and combo (lol) - reducing how long they're stuck there is the point.

SonicFox said:
I think it would be cool to consider giving Starving SOMETHING so that you can create a wave of Umbrella players that could be considered "STARVING" players now.
I don't think Starving is ever going to be that kind of state personally, I'd rather buff Ravenous to the point where it feels like Starving is an appropriate punishment for mismanaging it. From your notes it sounds like Ravenous just needs to be more powerful, which I think is totally fair to talk about. I agree getting stuck on the other side of the screen against Peacock in Starving is probably GGs though, she may need a few things tweaked there to make that more viable.
 
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Lenny's visual indicator needs to appear sooner imo.
 
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Liam said:
I don't think Starving is ever going to be that kind of state personally, I'd rather buff Ravenous to the point where it feels like Starving is an appropriate punishment for mismanaging it. From your notes it sounds like Ravenous just needs to be more powerful, which I think is totally fair to talk about. I agree getting stuck on the other side of the screen against Peacock in Starving is probably GGs though, she may need a few things tweaked there to make that more viable.
The only thing I’m a bit wary of is that before there WAS a way to manage it even if it was broken.

Now the only way it’s manageable is IF you land the hit, which I think long term can be a pretty harsh punishment for Umby players who are players who are dealing with a slowered pace game. My concern is I fear for her viability when these games arise, as I believe NOT getting the hit and playing and neutral and becoming WORSE for it/potentially the worst character in the game may be incredibly unfair to her.

Maybe adding something to get her back to Satiated from Starving could be investigated, or if there’s been enough time passed while in starving, she returns to base values.

Edit: The main point/TLDR is before there was something that WAS manageable/managed in Neutral with bubbles, and now it feels more like a ticking time bomb where if you DONT get the hit in a certain time frame, it’s over for you.
 
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Yea I just think with how hunger exists in its current state, the optimal play pattern versus Umby is just to drain her hunger.

Right now she's very analogous to sekmet where the risk reward of interacting with sekmet was too poorly in the defenders favor, so you would block and camp sekmet to force them to lose HP until they feel like playing Eliza again. Umby has no way to gain hunger unless she gets the hit and a MUCH worse pre hit that makes pushblock difficult to deal with. Which means you just camp her until she gets to her worse mode, or do a long combo to force hunger drain to get there naturally.

I'd like to see this get changed mostly just to promote healthy interaction on both sides. Rather than buffs Rav so much so to make the downside of Starving worth it, I'd much rather see things like hunger not draining in combos when you decay to ravenous or Ravenous -> Starving only exists if the opponent hits you. This way you force both players to interact as now you can't do a long combo and force a satiated umby player into Starving, and you can't just call a lockdown assist against ravenous umby and ignore the whole mode. You have to interact with ravenous at some point.

Anyway with that said, I think umby is really fun. All I would ask is if her combo routing could be changed to be more fun against heavies. Things like 5hk bouncing higher to allow more consistent follow ups across the cast? Or even 6hp and stuffed dp knocking up higher just to make comboing heavies a little more fun. Obviously damage nerfs will come, but new and old umby routing makes playing against a heavy feel like you lose access to your kit ESPECIALLY without otg.
 
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Also while I'm here can anything be done about how polarizing point robo is? Dahlia - Robo is one example.

I think pea got changed for being just as unfun to interact with, leaving robo as is with similar highs just shifts the narrative imo.
 
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Hey y'all. Long time lurker, first time poster. For some context as to who I am since I'm not super involved in the community: I've been playing Skullgirls on-and-off since launch, and my most recent (and consistent) "on" period started when Umbrella came out. I've been playing her almost entirely solo since then (I realize she's not good solo, before anyone says) with my friends and have put in a few hundred hours just doing that. I adore her! So I thought I'd give my first impressions on Beta Umby.

First, I want to say that I think the overall direction of this rework is the right way to go. Being required to engage with all of Umbrella's hunger states instead of just sitting in Ravenous 24/7 for the sake of being optimal is very good and fun, and Satiated/Overstuffed being actual modes is fantastic. I don't mind the nerfs to her annoying tools and hurtboxes to make her more fun to play against, and have in fact not noticed any of them besides the TT hitgrab change.

BUT, just based on my first impressions, I have two problems, one major and one minor. The big one has already been touched upon above by Sonic and Juuse, in that Umbrella having no way to regain hunger outside of getting a hit is way, way, WAY too harsh. Especially when you're playing Umbrella by herself! It encourages the opponent to play abusively, exclusively to get her to fall into Starving (either through being lame or doing long combos to let her hunger drain), at which point, so long as they don't make any egregious mistakes, they can just back off and lame her out because she's the worst character in the game in that state and has no actual options to fight back - it's checkmate. She just has to hope her opponent makes a mistake, all the while losing all of her red health, and being that helpless sucks and is no fun at all! Starving is supposed to be a punishment, but "lose Umbrella" (or worse, lose the match if she's your last/only character) is way too extreme! I wouldn't be surprised if it made her totally unviable in high levels.

I realize that the intent is to make sure that "Ravenous is not free" but even in matches where I was deliberately trying to avoid ever falling into Ravenous, I still fell into it quite often just due to how quickly her hunger drains and how hard it can be for Umbrella to approach in certain matchups. It gives me the vibe that I'm basically having to play Don't Starve in Skullgirls, which isn't very interesting or fun, it just causes her to be anxiety-inducing. Ravenous uptime is already way, way down with the hunger management changes, and Starving would still be a punishment even if she had a way to escape without landing a hit.

So my suggestions to deal with this are twofold:
1. Umbrella shouldn't lose Hunger over time while she's being comboed, or should otherwise lose it very slowly while being comboed.
2. Umbrella should have the L Bubble Butterfly back. If there was one, and ONLY one change that I could ask for and recieve with this rework, it's that. Umbrella having a means to restore her hunger without having to actually land a hit on the opponent was a core part of her design (as I saw it) specifically to avoid abusive play patterns from the opponent. It's extremely important for her health as a character!

I recognize that the old play pattern with L Bubble letting her constantly maintain Ravenous was abusive, so I'm not asking for a return to that, but I think that Hungern eating the Butterfly restoring her to Max Satiated (and not working in Overstuffed at all) is a perfectly good compromise and gives Umbrella much needed safety, so she's not having to play a survival game in the middle of a fighting game.

Even if eating the Butterfly ONLY works in Starving, it would still be a major, major improvement, though I don't think that letting Umbrella have it as an eject button from Ravenous (or a way to maintain Satiated) would be unreasonable -- using the move in either Starving or Ravenous would still be a risk, as it leaves her wide open due to not producing any hitboxes, and staying in Satiated is perfecly fine for cautious players. I'd take L Bubble being slower and therefore riskier in Starving/Rav as well, I'd take not being able to call assists during the move, I'd even take some additional nerfs to Ravenous, just so long as she has the option! Otherwise I can't see Umbrella being a healthy character, as her zoner matchups go from "Really Bad" to "Ninth Circle of Hell", and even her better matchups feel like a ticking time bomb.

Okay, with that out of the way, my minor problem is that I don't like the input for the new overhead. 3MP is a REALLY weird and unintuitive input for a charge character that isn't Vatista (it has also caused me to misinput into SnS basically every time I've tried to actively use it), and also is a command normal input that hasn't been seen before in Skullgirls. I think you (Liam) were right to have it be 4MP as it was originally, even if it would require us Umbrella players to relearn some routes and some of the Para input tricks. Just so long as 2MP is prioritized over it when holding down back, I'm happy.

Thanks for reading! I'll report back with more thoughts as I put in some more time on Beta Umbrella. Overall I'm really loving the direction and so long as I've been able to avoid Starving, she's even more fun than she was before. So long as that pain point is addressed, I think that this version of Umby will be great.
 
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With Annie's Star Power getting a rework to drive me to call it Star Overdrive and Umbrella's Hunger Meter getting a rework on its behavior, what will Black Dahlia get in the rework department?
 
I really like the changes so far with Umbrella and I think its definitely leans into her identity a lot more. Weaving through modes instead of staying in ravenous is so nice. While the change is definitely a step in the right direction, I feel like something needs to be done to starving. I think it should really be a state that incentives you to go for high commitment options to get yourself out of a pinch. It doesn't really make sense to me why she doesnt have access to some of the ravenous upsides for eating moves alone considering, well, Hungerns a hungry boy.

This is just a handful of crazy gimmicky ballpark ideas but hear me out; how about increasing 1 hunger pip in starving if SNS hits a puddle, at the cost of umbrella getting a knockdown like usual? Or maybe giving Umbrella the ravenous version of tongue twister during starving instead of giving her back butterfly? Hell, maybe make starving 3MP like 28f and return 1 pip of hunger in starving. I feel like she really needs like one or two gimmicky ways to buy herself out of starving if her hunger is depleting so quickly and shes so easily prone to being zoned out in that state. That'd lead to some interesting play patterns at least. Just food for thought.
 
To preface, I'm not an Umbrella player, but I do like game design so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

VoltTurtle said:
2. Umbrella should have the L Bubble Butterfly back. If there was one, and ONLY one change that I could ask for and recieve with this rework, it's that. Umbrella having a means to restore her hunger without having to actually land a hit on the opponent was a core part of her design (as I saw it) specifically to avoid abusive play patterns from the opponent. It's extremely important for her health as a character!
I think this idea would be really healthy if the L bubble butterfly was an option only in Ravenous to take you back to Satiated. It would make it so you have to make a decision do you want to get in fast and reckless or get in slower and more methodically It would also keep starving as a you messed up big time now die.

The only other suggestions I would consider making for Umbrella based on the little bit of time playing with her yesterday are these. Making every mode except starving 3 pips with the current hunger drain would allow for players to play in each mode longer (i.e players who want to mix in ravenous can do so). Slower Hunger Drain while Umbrella is being combo'd, so when an umbrella is at 3 pips they aren't immediately taken to starving with no recourse.

This change is one that I just think would be interesting. Making it so when Umbrella swallows with level 3 instead of increasing ravenous pips it would take her back to retail ravenous with adjustments (i.e no ioh jmp, beta speed, whatever y'all think would make a conditional 3 bar install healthy) alongside double snap dropping the body and returning her to a normal state. If Ravenous is diet Moroha mode, Level 3 swallow would make ravenous diet Goku Moroha.

Those are my only 2 cents. I think the changes made to Umbrella have been incredibly healthy and excited to see what comes with the rest of the balance changes.

Edit: After reading this I realized the slower hunger drain is just a worse version of this and I would rather see this implemented.

JuuseBox said:
I'd like to see this get changed mostly just to promote healthy interaction on both sides. Rather than buffs Rav so much so to make the downside of Starving worth it, I'd much rather see things like hunger not draining in combos when you decay to ravenous or Ravenous -> Starving only exists if the opponent hits you. This way you force both players to interact as now you can't do a long combo and force a satiated umby player into Starving, and you can't just call a lockdown assist against ravenous umby and ignore the whole mode. You have to interact with ravenous at some point.
 
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I think I'll let her do something analogous to old L Bubble in Starving to regain some Hunger Meter and we'll test that out - she's really going to want a way to recover vs Peacock / Robo at fullscreen.

VoltTurtle said:
3MP is a REALLY weird and unintuitive input for a charge character that isn't Vatista (it has also caused me to misinput into SnS basically every time I've tried to actively use it), and also is a command normal input that hasn't been seen before in Skullgirls.
Correct it's a very odd input, although Umbrella is full of an odd mishmash of inputs already so if anyone was going to get something like this, it's her.

To call attention to it though:

> it has also caused me to misinput into SnS basically every time I've tried to actively use it

That's my bad, I wanted it on 3MP to specifically avoid conflicting with SnS when it ends with 6MP. If I put it on 4MP, charging SnS as soon as you hit 5MP from neutral is going to cause misinputs if you can't same frame 7+MP. If I put it on 6MP, it's impossible to perform it after blocking because you'll get SNS instead. 3MP is the only input that works here (after I fix SnS coming out with 3MP) that doesn't conflict, so I was just trying to err in player favor as much as possible.

Let me make the change to SNS not coming out when you end in 3MP and let's see how that goes. I'll need very fast feedback if we decide to change it again after that.
 
With the gradual removal of rising overheads, is it perhaps time Robo loses rising jLP as well?

I understand 5HK was buffed as nice compensation to the removal of idj jLP. Rising jLP works on characters that, let's be fair, she already decimates (such as but not limited to Beo, Bella). She  also has a juiced install with fast overheads.

If it's not just a matter of rising dj jLP as she leaves the ground, then there are still ways of setting up the spacing required for delay dj jMK high vs 2LK low (you're probably familiar with this as a clide player).

Just getting a feel on where we're at about these iohs.
 
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Cattfish said:
With the gradual removal of rising overheads, is it perhaps time Robo loses rising jLP as well?

I understand 5HK was buffed as nice compensation to the removal of idj jLP. Rising jLP works on characters that, let's be fair, she already decimates (such as but not limited to Beo, Bella). She  also has a juiced install with fast overheads.

If it's not just a matter of rising dj jLP as she leaves the ground, then there are still ways of setting up the spacing required for delay dj jMK high vs 2LK low (you're probably familiar with this as a clide player).

Just getting a feel on where we're at about these iohs.
I think losing the IOH from jLP on Beo/Bella/Eliza/Dahlia is worth considering, but the mixup you're describing gets mashed on for days and can be fuzzy blocked, including all the variations off of M Danger->TK L Beam midscreen and Mine->TK H Beam in the corner. It's a strong mixup but it's rare even at high level play, and generally people disrespect the mixup when I try to go for it.

I'll also say it's pretty difficult to set up and convert the rising jLP on the big bodies without certain assists or without heavy scaling(double jumping or pressing jMP), whereas the other characters with similar rising overhead mix have gotten a pretty good consistent reward for going for it without needing assists(Fortune, Band, and notably Squigly, who gets rising jLP M divekick for a safe, consistent stage 2 conversion on the same characters).
 
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You could give umbrella the ice cream intro as a taunt during starving to recover hunger. Even at around 80f she should be able to set it up vs zoners with retina covering her.

Also now that rav lost its most egregious tools and you can't really maintain the state anymore I think it could be moved to have 3 pips instead of just two. And maybe even give her back bubbles but have them disappear after only a few frames to go along with her faster 'in your face' playstyle during rav. She would have access to H bubble and even the sqrt setup for resets but wouldn't be able to play neutral with them.
 
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Iso said:
I think losing the IOH from jLP on Beo/Bella/Eliza/Dahlia is worth considering, but the mixup you're describing gets mashed on for days and can be fuzzy blocked, including all the variations off of M Danger->TK L Beam midscreen and Mine->TK H Beam in the corner. It's a strong mixup but it's rare even at high level play, and generally people disrespect the mixup when I try to go for it.

I'll also say it's pretty difficult to set up and convert the rising jLP on the big bodies without certain assists or without heavy scaling(double jumping or pressing jMP), whereas the other characters with similar rising overhead mix have gotten a pretty good consistent reward for going for it without needing assists(Fortune, Band, and notably Squigly, who gets rising jLP M divekick for a safe, consistent stage 2 conversion on the same characters).
I agree with you! I wanted to include that I was aware of the mixup, in case there was a fringe rule that somehow it couldn't be blockable while rising only on first jump. The primary point is intended for the IOH vs tall characters.
 
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Liam said:
I think I'll let her do something analogous to old L Bubble in Starving to regain some Hunger Meter and we'll test that out - she's really going to want a way to recover vs Peacock / Robo at fullscreen.

This is gonna be a super controversial take, but if the point of changes are to illicit interaction with all of Umbys stages, then I think this partial reversion would be contrary.

Umbrella is a resource management character. I think managing her resource properly should be important. With that, I don’t think her being able to save poor play by popping ptooie (as in the past), is what meter management looks like. I think adding an escape mechanism to starving just inherently removes risk. Especially when we’ve seen this before, people will call assist or spend a bar to essentially mitigate bad play. If this is to be a thing, I think it is something that should be considered PRIOR to falling into starving and should be a conscious decision.

I also don’t think this even addresses the large issues. Umbrella wants to be able to go up and down her hunger states. She wants to go up for damage and down for aggression. All of umbys management tools to increase her gauge are tied to hitting the opponent, decreasing is only possible by idling or taunting. I think the limited freedom in engaging with her own mechanic is a massive flaw. On the other hand, opponents want her to go down in gauge because of starving. Opponents can zone, hit, force long blockstrings, basically everything an opponent would do besides actively trolling interacts with the hungerm bar in the way they want. I think addressing the situations where umby wants to influence her hunger gauge, but can’t is more in tune with her rework than just rewarding what should be a mistake.

I mentioned in the other post how I think limiting the opponents interaction with the gauge would work. But even something like normals on block extending rav, adding someway to raise hunger from rav to satiated that isn’t conditional to a combo, or anything else that addresses those issues while keeping starving intact would be more faithful to the rework.

Idk I just want to experiment with things before just reverting back to literally what we had before.
 
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I'm preparing another patch with another round of Umbrella changes that I just finished a little while ago. @JuuseBox I think we're mostly on the same page, I didn't end up doing a starving escape yet, but various other changes like tweaking how fast Ravenous drains, reducing the timer even further when you're stuck in hitstun, blockstun, etc. Should hopefully be out today.

CaioLugon said:
You could give umbrella the ice cream intro as a taunt during starving to recover hunger. Even at around 80f she should be able to set it up vs zoners with retina covering her.
Yeah I almost did that for her very first initial release but didn't have time to rework the whole animation on Friday for this. Perhaps, though. It's a lot easier to punish a taunt than it is to punish L Bubble.

Cattfish said:
Just getting a feel on where we're at about these iohs.
I know it when I see it :P
 
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Is there anything planned for Squigly? I'm curious to mess around with having access to uncharged specials with QCB motions, though I suspect it'll be more of a buff than it seems. More importantly, the one thing I really want changed is that damn M DP. It's completely redundant with L DP and serves no purpose other than to be a misinput when trying to sing. I know there's ways around it, but it's an unnecessary nuisance that I'd love to see entirely removed.
 
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