Instant-air projectiles

[Protagonist_1]

What crippled Lex (and a lot of characters in injustice) is walkspeed. When a game has slow walkspeed, dealing with zoning becomes way more tedious, and trying to establish a safe range to whiff punish, anti-air, or counter poke becomes much more difficult than it should be. This is a lesson NRS has learned and has fixed in MKX (and hopefully they will do the same in the next iteration of injustice).

 

[WakeUp DP]

What crippled Lex (and a lot of characters in injustice) is walkspeed. When a game has slow walkspeed, dealing with zoning becomes way more tedious, and trying to establish a safe range to whiff punish, anti-air, or counter poke becomes much more difficult than it should be. This is a lesson NRS has learned and has fixed in MKX (and hopefully they will do the same in the next iteration of injustice).

QFTT!

I wish more people would get this^^^

 

[Barrogh]

I, for one, have problem that move can be made straight up better by using trickier input. There's just no decision making here unless ground projectile has some property IA doesn't, which is generally not the case. Considering how strong IAPs in NRS games are, that's pretty damn good recipe for "exciting" matchups.

I don't know if only hitting airborne targets is an answer, but I agree that IAFB should serve different purpose other than being better FB.

 

[Axel_Redd]

Instant air stuff should stay, hitting high only, making it hit only airborn opponents isnt necessary and really hurts a zoning characters options for keeping other characters at bay. Kabal and the Zod vs Lex MU are freaks of nature that arent commonplace things at all.

 

[Maasik]

What if you were only allowed to do two IAFB's in a row but they kept their properties? So you could still effectively zone people from mindlessly dashing in, while still giving them enough time to actually move in.
By this I mean imagine Zod (or Kabal or whoever) does 2 IAFB's, then would have to wait until the second Zod ball gets blocked or hits the opponent before he can shoot two more. Although, he could shoot two IAFB's then a slower recovering grounded FB, then shoot two more IAFB's.. rinse, repeat. I feel since the grounded ones recover slower it would allow ample time for characters to block the IAFB's and jump the grounded one to cover some space.

 

[Peckapowa]

Admittedly this isn't Injustice-exclusive, as such, but it's mostly in NRS games that this crops up.

Now, just to clarify early on, I don't have a problem with instant-air projectiles in and of themselves. However, it has to be said that NRS's method of balancing them is less than stellar at times. In both MK9 and Injustice, certain instant-air projectiles can make it very difficult for certain characters to approach at all. In at least one case as exposed recently (Zod vs Lex), it can be almost literally impossible to move at all. This has led to a lot of 3-7 and 2-8 MUs over the years, and that... that isn't good.

But what about if instant-air projectiles hit airborne opponents only?

Even with the caveat that they automatically whiff on grounded opponents, they're still very useful. They usually have faster recovery, they're still good for air control and discouraging jumping and often are very useful for building meter too. But if they only hit airborne opponents, it means you couldn't simply instant-air projectile all day and stop them from approaching, since then they can just dash forwards and not get hit. You can still make approaching annoying for them, but not difficult to the point of ridiculousness.

NRS have already (belatedly) realised that mid instant-air projectiles are a massive no-no and removed them - why not go one step further and make them only hit opponents in the air?

And I do realise that for certain characters, such a measure is rather unnecessary - Kitana, for example, has instant-air projectiles and is pretty well-balanced. But IMO, certain characters struggle with instant-air projectiles beyond a point which is reasonable, and changing all of them up to be able to deal with instant-air projectiles has a high risk of making them heavily overpowered. With that in mind, air hit-only instant-air projectiles seem like the best compromise.

Why not just balance their recovery so they serve the purpose of controlling air space for 1 particular point rather than being able to spam them continusouly??? It's kind of a boring form of zoning albeit it does take work to execute. Instant airs are even worst in a game like INJUSTICE without the ability to cancel dash. I personally had more problems with kitana than kabal but i think kitana probably need them to a degree...it'd be challenging to make a her zoning more interesting

 

[Peckapowa]

What crippled Lex (and a lot of characters in injustice) is walkspeed. When a game has slow walkspeed, dealing with zoning becomes way more tedious, and trying to establish a safe range to whiff punish, anti-air, or counter poke becomes much more difficult than it should be. This is a lesson NRS has learned and has fixed in MKX (and hopefully they will do the same in the next iteration of injustice).

Well, cyborg was kind of boring too me as a design... literally made to chuck fireballs could have had more tools... but outside of zod the zoning is fine i think... But i guess with this game the zoning is sometimes full-screen rushdown and the rushdown is cheap mixup games up close... it's a tradeoff. As a zoner personally I love the challenge of keeping someone out, but in injustice i'ts more about chucking shit at them until they die with some characters rather than controlling movement and punishing. I just hope mk x allows me to play that control your opponent playstyle and it isn't too easy for people to get in. Because injustice has a footsie problem, not a zoning problem when it comes to most of the cast. You can walk and dash and block your way in on DS and other zoners outside of zod really. Sinestro with meter and trait is op too. Martian is op because you can't footsie him. He is easily the most fun zoner imo


Also the counter-zoning tools in this game are ridiculous. Full screen out of the ground projectiles and tps and divekicks. You kind of need strong zoning. But i feel like the strength in zoning tools with pushblock caused mixups to be outrageous.

 

[Peckapowa]

IA projectiles in a game with good movement isnt an issue.

What made kabal good wasnt IAGBs but NMDCs.

I disagree, kabals iagbs allowed to outzone just about every character, build crazy meter, and control the neutral game pretty strongly. They were excessively important to his dominance. NDC allowed to further dominate the spacing game and his pressure wasn't need to severely in quite a few matchups. He could grab buzzsaw and oh his way to victory with his zoning game. You also have to consider how powerful buzzsaw was, it had like 3 frame startup or something bananas so he could just trade all, and his hitbox would make moves like sektor's tp whiff and make it like 10000-0 matchup in his favor.

Take away his iagbs and you have an arguably balanced character, unless of course some human perfected the 2ndcs