Goat-City
Banned
The rumored Quan Chi nerfs coming soon are all wrong. I've been thinking for a long time how to both balance and change him to be less of a guess heavy character and I think I understand exactly how to do it.
There are three things that are overpowered about Quan that can be nerfed without changing his play style or game plan drastically. Summoner and Sorcerer do slightly too much damage, he gets a meterless vortex in all 3 variations, and Summoner's hard-to-blockables. I'll outline my fixes for these problems individually in separate paragraphs.
To nerf his damage in Summoner and Sorcerer without nerfing Warlock's damage, which is pretty much perfect, he should lose 2% on f2122, 2% on b324, and 2% on the launching version of b2. This would decrease his damage on just about all his bnbs by 4%. To make it so this doesn't affect Warlock, his 21f3 string should get 17-20 frames of cancel advantage so you can link it with rune, portal scoop, or portal grab. This would give that string a use and his damage would stay roughly the same as it is now.
To remove the meterless vortex, which is usually done by combo'ing into trance and then using f21 for 16 frames of hit advantage for a free 50/50, it would require a couple changes. First of all, b2 would have to become a mid and f1 and f4 should become his new overheads. The reason for this is because b2 has to be able to combo into trance since it's not only a great overhead but also a great space control tool. F1 and f14's cancel advantage should then be decreased to only 20 so trance would not link afterwards, so in order to combo with it you would have to use the MB rune, which means it would now be a 1 bar vortex instead of a meterless one. As for f4, it should lose all of its cancel advantage and it should have its recovery frames decreased to about 22 or so; that way it would be a decent stagger string without it leading into a big combo on hit.
[Continued]
This gives his 2 currently useless universal strings very good uses, and it also makes him a bit less meter dependent because he will no longer have to use meter to make his overhead safe because f142 is only minus 10 on block with great push back. Also, this would reduce the damage off his overhead starter by 2% and there would be a gap between f1 and rune that the opponent could armor through, meaning if your opponent has a bar then there would no longer be a mix up after an overhead or a low into EX rune since the opponent could armor through both options. This would balance EX rune so it would not have to be any less plus on block and therefore Sorcerer would not lose his rune trap, which is extremely important to the variation for several reasons.
Lastly, Summoner's hard-to-blockables could be removed by increasing the amount of frames a consecutive overhead and low would hit mid in. If that wouldn't work, they could also make it so you cannot use a normal after inputting a bat command, or input a bat command while using a normal, until the bat hits or the normal recovers. Even without these two things, the fact that you would be forced to use EX rune to combo after the overhead would significantly balance the hard-to-blockable vortex by itself, especially with the damage nerf I also suggested for the Summoner variation.
Buffs
Warlock and Sorcerer both need just a couple minor buffs to go with these nerfs. Warlock needs better tracking on both portal grab and portal stab, mainly portal stab so it can be used as a consistent anti-airing armor move to compensate for his easily jumped over and whiff punished EX portal slam. Portal stab also needs to have slightly faster startup, about 16-18 frames instead of 22, because many times characters have time to jump, land and block before the portal stab connects.
As for Sorcerer, I made an entire thread many months back on how to make his meter drain spell useful, which you can read here - http://testyourmight.com/threads/how-to-make-the-meter-spell-black-magic-useful.57166/ - but to quickly summarize what he needs, the meter drain spell should by far be his fastest spell, about as fast as Summoner's bat summon, so he could combo with a JIP after using it during a trance, and he should be able to cancel his spells into the meter drain spell or vice versa the meter drain spell into one of the other 2 spells.
One More Thing
One of the rumored nerfs coming for Quan is the fact that his EX rune is going to be minus 1 on block, making his EX skull the go-to frame trap tool. As I partially explained above, this nerf would not only make no sense but it would be too much and would hurt Warlock and Sorcerer much more than Summoner. However, if you want to make the EX skull useful, you could give even more plus frames on block to the EX skull, like 30. This would allow him to use it to get a guaranteed 50/50 afterwards, unlike the EX rune which leaves a gap between both f1 and b2 that they can armor or backdash through. That's all, thanks for reading.
There are three things that are overpowered about Quan that can be nerfed without changing his play style or game plan drastically. Summoner and Sorcerer do slightly too much damage, he gets a meterless vortex in all 3 variations, and Summoner's hard-to-blockables. I'll outline my fixes for these problems individually in separate paragraphs.
To nerf his damage in Summoner and Sorcerer without nerfing Warlock's damage, which is pretty much perfect, he should lose 2% on f2122, 2% on b324, and 2% on the launching version of b2. This would decrease his damage on just about all his bnbs by 4%. To make it so this doesn't affect Warlock, his 21f3 string should get 17-20 frames of cancel advantage so you can link it with rune, portal scoop, or portal grab. This would give that string a use and his damage would stay roughly the same as it is now.
To remove the meterless vortex, which is usually done by combo'ing into trance and then using f21 for 16 frames of hit advantage for a free 50/50, it would require a couple changes. First of all, b2 would have to become a mid and f1 and f4 should become his new overheads. The reason for this is because b2 has to be able to combo into trance since it's not only a great overhead but also a great space control tool. F1 and f14's cancel advantage should then be decreased to only 20 so trance would not link afterwards, so in order to combo with it you would have to use the MB rune, which means it would now be a 1 bar vortex instead of a meterless one. As for f4, it should lose all of its cancel advantage and it should have its recovery frames decreased to about 22 or so; that way it would be a decent stagger string without it leading into a big combo on hit.
[Continued]
This gives his 2 currently useless universal strings very good uses, and it also makes him a bit less meter dependent because he will no longer have to use meter to make his overhead safe because f142 is only minus 10 on block with great push back. Also, this would reduce the damage off his overhead starter by 2% and there would be a gap between f1 and rune that the opponent could armor through, meaning if your opponent has a bar then there would no longer be a mix up after an overhead or a low into EX rune since the opponent could armor through both options. This would balance EX rune so it would not have to be any less plus on block and therefore Sorcerer would not lose his rune trap, which is extremely important to the variation for several reasons.
Lastly, Summoner's hard-to-blockables could be removed by increasing the amount of frames a consecutive overhead and low would hit mid in. If that wouldn't work, they could also make it so you cannot use a normal after inputting a bat command, or input a bat command while using a normal, until the bat hits or the normal recovers. Even without these two things, the fact that you would be forced to use EX rune to combo after the overhead would significantly balance the hard-to-blockable vortex by itself, especially with the damage nerf I also suggested for the Summoner variation.
Buffs
Warlock and Sorcerer both need just a couple minor buffs to go with these nerfs. Warlock needs better tracking on both portal grab and portal stab, mainly portal stab so it can be used as a consistent anti-airing armor move to compensate for his easily jumped over and whiff punished EX portal slam. Portal stab also needs to have slightly faster startup, about 16-18 frames instead of 22, because many times characters have time to jump, land and block before the portal stab connects.
As for Sorcerer, I made an entire thread many months back on how to make his meter drain spell useful, which you can read here - http://testyourmight.com/threads/how-to-make-the-meter-spell-black-magic-useful.57166/ - but to quickly summarize what he needs, the meter drain spell should by far be his fastest spell, about as fast as Summoner's bat summon, so he could combo with a JIP after using it during a trance, and he should be able to cancel his spells into the meter drain spell or vice versa the meter drain spell into one of the other 2 spells.
One More Thing
One of the rumored nerfs coming for Quan is the fact that his EX rune is going to be minus 1 on block, making his EX skull the go-to frame trap tool. As I partially explained above, this nerf would not only make no sense but it would be too much and would hurt Warlock and Sorcerer much more than Summoner. However, if you want to make the EX skull useful, you could give even more plus frames on block to the EX skull, like 30. This would allow him to use it to get a guaranteed 50/50 afterwards, unlike the EX rune which leaves a gap between both f1 and b2 that they can armor or backdash through. That's all, thanks for reading.
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