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Breakthrough - Kenshi Kenshi's crappy damage scales are still there.

Lokheit

Noob
Just wanted to post that all of those double damage penalties on Kenshi's launchers that I posted some weeks ago in another thread, are still there. The only reason combo damage seems to be slightly better is that s4 is now 5 damage instead of 7.

Copy/Pasting the double damage penalty explanations from the other thread just as a reminder:


There was a patch where it was mentioned that some Kenshi's moves weren't scaling as intended, and from that patch ALL VERSIONS of Kenshi DB1 have 2 damage penalties instead of 1.

Damage penalties in general come in jumps of 0.05 (0.95, 0.9, 0.85, 0.8... etc...) with the exception of the "hard cap penalty" that is 0.66 (uppercuts have it and some moves like Scorpion's spear of Sub-Zero's 242).

There are some moves though, that have penalties on a single hit that are the result of combining multiple of the "regular penalties". Many of these moves adquired these penalties after patches so I'm not sure if they were intended to work that way or someone screwed up the numbers and just added a new penalty on top of the old one (for example, a move having a penalty of 0.95x0.85 that is almost the same of the 0.8 penalty that is commonly seen).

All of Kenshi's DB1 have multiple penalties on the same hit:

Balanced:

The regular Rising Karma has a penalty of 0.9x0.9 (total of 0.81 instead of your typical 0.8).

Kenjutsu:

Rising Sword has a penalty of 0.8x0.85 (total of 0.68, almost as heavy as the hard cap) which is insane considering the juggle is really hard to connect and this makes the damage really low.

The Ex version has the same penalty on the first hit, combined with other 2 hits of 0.95 and 0.8 each, this leads to a total penalty of 0.5168 which means you're getting almost half of the damage of whatever comes after the launcher (and that's why EX DB1 doesn't lead to anything worth telling).

Possesed:

EX DB1: Even if you can hardly connect after this one, and only on the EX version and either the corner or a ranged attack, it also has a double penalty of 0.85x0.9 for a total of 0.765.

All of these double penalties should be removed and replaced by your typical 0.8 to 0.9 launcher penalty so Kenshi's combos suck a bit less.

On top of that, and I think the fact that this is still in the game (and now duplicated) is pure mockery, 111 for Balanced and Possesed STILL HAS A 0.85 damage scale instead of 0.95 that is the one you find in regular jabs while 0.85 is the one that for example Tri-Borg Sub-Zero applies on his regular Iceball.

But the world is even more beautiful than that: Remember that new string Kenshi got? It recycles not only the animations of the last 2 hits of 111 but also its damage scale so the last hit of that one also has a 0.85 damage scale penalty.

Basically it's better to stop at 11 and F21 as combo damage is better with them than with their children and both are -1 on block while their children are -10. Why these strings continuations are in the game is a mistery if they're really intended to have that heavy damage penalty.

So... well... at least Kenjutsu looks like I can play it.
 

DDutchguy

Stand 4'ing airplanes out of the sky
So no one has commented on a thread that has legit good calculations to it?

Balanced gets very fat damage off of db1 so it doesn't seem like the extra scaling compared to other specials matters too much.

In Possessed you're not really supposed to really get good damage off of EX-db1 so it shouldn't be much of an issue there either. Still interesting that that move specifically gets more scaling. Maybe to make sure you can't get insane corner damage from it?

I always had a hunch Kenjutsu's db1 had a lot of scaling to it, nice to see it confirmed now. I imagine his meterless damage would become kinda high without it. EX-db1 is the weird one though. The idea seems to be that EX-db1 is your armored anti-air (which it is really not good at unless you are a Jedi of spacing as Pig put it), so it makes some sense that it gets bigger scaling. However, because as an anti-air it is pretty bad, this makes me scratch my head a little bit.

111 getting extra scaling is also weird, not to mention the fact that it no longer combos into EX low totem in Possessed (pretty sure it used to pre-patch, can anyone confirm?). Isn't it supposed to be your hit confirmable punisher? In any case, in a match it sounds like you'll have to use either 114 or 11 for punishing. Weird change.

Also the new string getting the extra scaling too is wot-worthy.

So basically normal launchers (specials or normal or both?) get either 0.8 or 0.9 scaling while Kenshi gets more on his Rising Karmas yes? Sorta weird that it's the case, but besides Kenjutsu I don't think it's that bad.
 

Lokheit

Noob
So basically normal launchers (specials or normal or both?) get either 0.8 or 0.9 scaling while Kenshi gets more on his Rising Karmas yes? Sorta weird that it's the case, but besides Kenjutsu I don't think it's that bad.
Some of them are heavier but generally it's around that. All of them go in jumps of 0.05 (0.9, 0.85, 0.8, 0.75...) with the "hard cap" being 0.66 (2/3 rounded down), but some moves have 2 damage penalties in one (and I have the theory that every single move with a double damage penalty is a move that has been patched at some point, Kenshi's launchers had regular penalties until a patch stating that they were changing with no further details and lately almost every time that they balance a move that I know the damage scale, it gets a double damage scale).

I find it particularly weird because the "jumps of 0.05" seemed to be a game design rule if you go by vanilla game before the patchs, and it seems like instead of replacing the old penalties (for example changing a 0.9 into a 0.8 to balance its damage) they multiplied it by more penalties also following the 0.05 rule (in the same example, adding a new 0.9 penalty for a 0.9*0.9 = 0.81 total penalty) and in some cases these combinations get quite ridiculous (Kenjutsu EX DB1 for example, you gat basically half of following damage) and sometimes I wonder if they just wanted to add the second one and accidentally combined them.

I don't know how their code works, maybe it's really hard to access and change the lines stating each move specific damage scale, because this "just multiply it by another one" thing looks a bit lazy if it were easy to access. Maybe the way patches work they can't modify the original code and that's why they have to multiply them with new ones instead of rewritting the code. If that's the case I think the next time they should implement in advance a system to rewrite that with each patch.

Anyway before I derail more from the original question, yeah, most launchers and combo extenders are way softer than that and yes, generally it goes with anything, normal string or special move, allowing you to extend the combo either stunning or launching the opponent (some moves like Kenjutsu's tele-hold or Quan Chi EX trance get the regular 0.95 scale from jabs though).

By next week I should've finished editing a full video guide on the damage formulas (my PS4 is giving me problems though, but I hope it will be out by then) as part of a series of guides explaining internal game mechanics I hope that will help everyone understand it better :)