The more the game gets played out, the more it feels like Doomsday belongs on this list.
Doomsday started out as a pretty dominant looking character- Earthshaker that no one could block consistently, almost unanti-airable Falling Brimstone that put him in the driver's seat whenever he was near you, trait and teleporting Supernova that made him impossible to keep out.
He was so dominant, that NRS nerfed him on Day 1, lowering his trait duration to 5 seconds (down from 6) and increasing its cooldown to 15 seconds (up from 10).
However, there are two problems with this picture. 1. A lot of Doomsday's perceived strengths turned out to be gimmicks. Strong players eventually learnt to block ES consistently, punish supernova, and block/jab out traited Doomsday.
Don't take my word for it. This is what REO said on 4th May, even before Doomsday's Falling Brimstone got nerfed.
- DoomsDay
He will get worse as time goes on. Right now his dominance is mostly all gimmicks (even I still fall for them and am not used to shutting them down, yet) that are not truly effective against players who will have a ton of experience under their belt. I predict a year from now DoomsDay will become the Nightwolf of the game and move down to low-mid. He will be hot for the first few months, but he will steadily decline. I feel bad for all you DoomsDay players who aren't rioting for buffs to get them while you can. His splash is something he really needed. I don't care if it had a phantom hitbox on it, some other moves in the game have the same thing yet they're still in.
Nevertheless, Doomsday got nerfed (or "fixed") two more more times. On 7 May, during the Lobo Patch, his Falling Brimstone splash attack was given a smaller hitbox, and on 21 May, during the Batgirl Patch his Hunter string (1,1,2) was made to do .4% chip, down from 7.17% chip.
Now I don't think the nerfs, individually, were bad ideas. The (likely) reasoning behind each of these nerfs is pretty solid- having a trait that lasted 6 seconds and cooled down for 10 seconds meant that Doomsday was unlaunchable/couldn't be knockdown during 1/3 of the time in every match. Having a body splash that only a handful of characters could anti-air meant that Doomsday had some of the best no-risk pressure in the game.
However nerfing all these things together meant that Doomsday now has real difficulties getting in, and once he gets in he no longer dominates opponents close up. Doomsday is a rushdown character who doesn't have any fast moves that give him massive advantage on block or 50/50s that lead to big damage. The two things that he had- a trait that allowed him to stay in without worrying about wake up attacks once it was up, and a splash that forced the opponent to guess between neutral jump splash and jump forward splash, have both been taken away.
Moreover, those strengths that he had had served to cover several of his crippling flaws. Now that they're gone, the character is being exposed hard.
(1) Doomsday does poor damage relative to the entire cast.
I'm not just talking about the fact that his BnBs only do somewhere from 36-42% damage starting from a splash. The real problem that Doomsday faces is that he can't get good damage off combo starters that he can land from relatively low risk situations- he needs to land a splash or a 14 frame-mid (stand 2 or 3) or a 10 frame-high (stand 1). And now that the splash's hitbox has been nerfed, landing a splash is considerably high risk. Get anti-aired or whiff punished (landing recovery means that whiffed splashes can be punished) and he stands to lose more damage than he would have landed if the splash had hit. Compared to almost everyone else who gets their BnBs off quick standing mids with good range, the amount of damage that Doomsday deals really doesn't cut it.
(2) Doomsday is an okizeme character who doesn't deal well with the wake up system in this game.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Suffice to say that when Doomsday had a trait that had a 6 second duration and 10 second cool down, he didn't really have to worry about an opponent's wake up attacks. Now that his trait lasts a lot shorters and takes a lot longer to cooldown, he can't rely on it as a way to deal with wake up attacks (unlike Bane with his Venom).
The end result is the Doomsday of today.
Perfect legend thinks he's crap:
Doomsday just sucks now good god
And even Pig ofThe Hut, a player who used to hate on Doomsday now agrees that he's pretty bad
i agree w you on doomsday
TLDR: The nerfs on Doomsday, in conjunction with his weaknesses from before, now add up to a pretty mediocre character.
Now I don't think that it will take a lot to make him a viable top 8 character, and a few tweaks would go a long way. But suggesting Doomsday buffs is a whole new topic and I've bored you guys long enough already.
colt
GGA Jeremiah
@
AK Pig Of The Hut
REO
Perfect Legend
Metzos
HungryforPasta
Lt. Box
