Doomed to mediocrity because every patch he drops. Rremember at one point he was significantly better than Reptile, Takeda, etc, but buffs to those characters changed that. He went from a top 10 variation or possibly two Top 15 variations, to lower, to lower, to lowerrr, to at the top of the lower mid tier now. Meanwhile guys like Lao have just been great from Day 1. Imagine if he continues getting nothing while *insert next character(s) to pass him again* get buffs. He'll just continue his downward slide and then patches will be finished.
I also don't think +10 knives would change too much for him because of his toolset, I was just commentating on the "it's too much" statement when better characters with more dirt already have bigger frame advantages. "Not what he needs" is one thing and I agree, but saying its "too much" like it would make him some broken tier is just wrong. This is the fear that most people have about characters not half as good as the ones already in the game.
90% is 9/10 which probably is about right. I remember sooooooo many Kano main's early on. Look at the first few months in the Cyber thread and the general discussion, he was actually popular the first few months. Now there isn't barely anyone left from Showtime to Steve to Decay to Royale to Hippo, to others that are TYM like Dave to to Dribirut to Rude to etc to etc that fully main's the character. Any time you see Kano now it's either a "counter pick" or a "I haven't learned this MU enough with my better main yet" pick when sooooo many people used to main him. That's not a good look for his future when people fully adjust to MUs.
What I see now, and what most people seem to have come to is-
-Wanna grapple? Why play Commando when Sun God does almost everything it does better and then some?
-Want space control? Why play Cyber when HQT/BS Shinnok does almost everything it does better and then some?
-Wanna 50/50? Why play Cutthroat when Erron/QC does almost everything it does better and then some?
I've sat on D'Vorah now for a while, and unless some real buffs or KP2 surprises I'll likely stay. She's amazing! When I use her I can feel the foolishness of the game. She has her weakness or two but I honestly don't think I've complained a single time about her yet, like literally not once. Kano on the other hand feels like you're using inferior tools than your opponent most matches and the trade off is the reward feeling for winning "honest and fair". I'd love to play him again which is why I still talk about him, he's like that first love, but the dream is dead. I'm from nyc man, we don't like to play fair lol.
Kano was not significantly better than Reptile, Reptile always had better damage and mixups in all his variations. Takeda was worse though but Ronin got buffs so now it's pretty good.
There are hardly any people that are full mains of characters nowadays anyway, look at Honeybee picking up Tremor even though he plays D'Vorah or Sonicfox picking up Kitana/Cassie even though he mains Erron. It's not that the character is that bad, it's that other characters are fun to play as well and they want to play other characters too. Hell I have a ton of pocket variations but Kano is still my main, not for counterpicking reasons just because I find them fun
If you look back in the Kano threads you'll find people that don't post any more but might still play him so I don't think that's a fair point. There are still plenty of people who still post in the Kano forums that only play him: Jupe (who WON a European competition not that long ago with JUST Kano may I remind you), Noobe (who I'm pretty sure has better results than Coach Steve), countrypistol, FlappyDaniel, Zatoichi, bdizzle, you get what I'm saying. And that's not even half the people I could name, that's just who comes to mind right now. Point is 90% is definitely an exaggeration and we've had other people picking him up as well like Biohazard for example so although there
are undeniably people that have dropped him it doesn't mean he's that bad and it doesn't mean others aren't still doing well with him or picking him up themselves.
You'd play Kano over others for a bunch of reasons. Maybe you find him more fun, maybe you prefer the archetypes/moves he provides, maybe you prefer to play someone super safe which Kano is, maybe you like how great in footsies he is, maybe you're a character loyalist, or as I thought would be obvious some people just don't play top tier because they're not fun. People also want to enjoy the game and some people just don't enjoy switching to top tier instead. If that were the case I for example in the case of Shinnok would play Bone Shaper over Necromancer but I don't because I find it boring and I don't like losing F22. I can understand other people who switch to top tier but in my opinion that says more about the player than the character. Not to say the players are bad, I just don't think using a character as a crutch is helping anyone lol.
You would play Commando for safety and unbreakable damage, something someone like Kotal isn't as good for.
You would play Cybernetic for the mid knives and great footsie tools like B2.
You would play Cutthroat for what are probably the safest meterless 50/50s in the game, never mind the fact they can also be hit confirmed into an easy 40-45%. Erron and Quan Chi don't do that better because they need to spend a bar to make their mixups safe and even then there's a gap you can backdash or armour through in the move they use to make them safe with meter.
I'm not Kano isn't amazing but he's certainly not invalidated by other characters. Other characters do
some things better but not all. You can't complain about Kano being mediocre anyway, you've made the decision to switch to top tier instead so go complain about D'Vorah heheheh
Cybernetic needs more damage on knives and less scaling on 2+4MB, Commando needs less scaling on 321+3MB and maybe a few more tick throws. That itself should make him good enough to compete because that's where he loses in matchups most of the time. He has some of the best footsies in the game man, don't forget that.
