Captain Cold General Discussion Thread

[M.D.]

Finally someone with reason. NRS hire this man

 

[Tanno]

Can you please explain the intricacies of the cold vs deadshot match?

What @imblackjames said earlier I concur. As a CC main it's a real challenge to fill the trait along with the zoning. The only way to fully fill the trait is to face the CQC chars, like Catwoman. That's why the Ice Trap (called Big Freeze) is there. His Wall is so slow (2 times slow than UB Sub's Parry). Same goes for the icicle. Everything is punishable, because Cold is so slow movingly. You even saw his gameplay. Try playing him against any character, and you'll see the problems he has. Even @IrishMantis was kind of struggling with him in his match.

What NRS did was the worst thing to happen for Cold (and for the other bottom tier chars). They nerfed almost every top tier, and buffed this super-chick. They, also, nerfed even more Captain Cold, something that he DIDN'T need. He didn't need the nerfhammer. He needed tweaks or the buffhammer to be viable and finally a threat against the other characters, excluding the CQC ones. Now everybody is wondering why NRS isn't listening to us, and listens to this fox by showing the characters. -_-;

All we asked is to balance the game. Not to make it more unbalanced. It's like I said earlier. If they buff someone of the top tier and nerf the bottom tier, then they're smoking a lot of weed and get stoned behind the scenes.

 

[RiBBz22]

What is "lazy" about a character having very defined strengths and weaknesses? The goal cannot be to make every character well-rounded because it's a needlessly complicated route that will not pay off in the end.

Games have made characters with asymmetrical designs for years and many of them do have large imbalances in the character matchups, and this is very often the price of having distinct strengths and weaknesses on characters. I don't know why all of a sudden there has been this big blowup where everyone agreed that polarized tools are now symptomatic results of intentionally making characters "bad," but it's a terrible take.

Bringing it back to Cold, no one is saying that he doesn't have issues, and I'll never understand why this is always brought up when someone dares to say a character may be better than what is commonly thought. The argument is not that he doesn't have weaknesses or bad matchups; the argument is that, against what appeared to be all common knowledge, a character that was literally described as "not worth being in the game" won a major tournament largely by himself. Are Cold players mediocre and simply not taking advantage of his strengths in certain matchups? Was this an anomaly? Was this just an example of the best player of the game outshining his opponents?

There's a lot of questions to be had, but what should normally be a fun and exciting development has pretty much changed to a bunch of players chest-thumping and shutting down any type of discussion. It's brutal.

I only watched the top 16 recap but the only thing that surprised me was that Sonic's Cold beat a top Superman, which I feel is a pretty poor MU for Cold. But since both players are team echo fox I am sure they play each other a lot...and sometimes situations like that start to bend more towards the player/momentum/mental state rather than straight up character choice. Other than that I saw Cold picked in two favorable MU's by the end of the top 16 (Bane/Scarecrow) and counter picking Deadshot with Red Hood which makes sense since it is a losing MU. I get your point above, but IMO having an asymmetrical character design isn't something I am fond of. There are decent sized group of characters that really render almost all of Cold's options completely useless IMO through the use of simple full screen tactics.

 

[M.D.]

I'm actually getting a warm fuzzy feeling inside when I see people actually thinking and making sense here.

Compared to all the horrors out there that instantly have Cold tournament viable and they don't even read what one writes.

It reminds me of those scenes in the cheap american lawyer movies:

- Were you there the night the victim was killed?
- Yes, but I was drugged and tied in the basem....
- YES OR NO ANSWER PLEASE. THE JURY WILL DISREGARD THE LAST REMARK. Were you there?
-Yes, but....
- Please note that the defendant was there at the night of the murder, thank you.


I think i'll stick in this thread as my home and never click outside again. Every discussion in the other threads goes like this:

 

[RiBBz22]

I'm actually getting a warm fuzzy feeling inside when I see people actually thinking and making sense here.

Compared to all the horrors out there that instantly have Cold tournament viable and they don't even read what one writes.

It reminds me of those scenes in the cheap american lawyer movies:

- Were you there the night the victim was killed?
- Yes, but I was drugged and tied in the basem....
- YES OR NO ANSWER PLEASE. THE JURY WILL DISREGARD THE LAST REMARK. Were you there?
-Yes, but....
- Please note that the defendant was there at the night of the murder, thank you.


I think i'll stick in this thread as my home and never click outside again. Every discussion in the other threads goes like this:

TYM just has a hive mind mentality and will take any easy opportunity like this to take this tournament result to devalue any sort of discussion or arguments about the character that are and have always been sound. I guess in future tournaments everyone is going to be playing Captain Cold so I look forward to seeing entire tournaments just turning into Captain Cold mirrors.

 

[KH_Seraph]

From what I've seen of SonicFox's CC (I haven't viewed the tournament matches yet), he get's away with murder quite often just because his opponents respect him quite a bit. Also, I've seen his matches against Bane/HoneyBee's Flash/Semij's Catwoman and those are all winning matchups for Cold because they're CQC type characters.

I'm surprised to hear about the win against Theo's Superman, also surprised SonicFox says CC wins against Aquaman, but unsurprised he beat Scarecrow (Another favorable MU for CC), and that he had to counterpick Deadshot with Red Hood because that's an unwinnable matchup for CC unless you play out of your mind and the DS is butt-cheeks.

 

[M.D.]

I actually laughed out loud at the Cold beating Aquaman bit.

Also indeed, there's a big problem with Sonic as opponents get intimidated and shutdown all logic and brain functions so he gets away with so much it's not even funny any more.

I would like to see Sonic vs Dragon but on fake accounts or with booths so he doesn't know it's Sonic.
If he wins that i'll admit to being the biggest scrub in this forum's history.

 

[EntropicByDesign]

Seriously do not understand why

A) because the best NRS player on the planet won matches with cold, it suddenly makes him awesome and the best and the whole Cold community is just downplaying and blah blah..

and

B) Why people feel the need to come in to this thread and try to put a community on blast.. Is it a superiority thing? Do you all need to try and shit on someone online THAT badly? It would be different if all we saw were Cold buff threads with outlandish requests, but I dont see those. The Cold community, all, like, 4 of them, while somewhat sad, seem reasonable.

None of you KNEW IT ALL ALONG! That Cold was some secret top tier or someshit.. And the character having a few good MUs does not make him magically amazing. Jesus. Did you watch something different than I did? Sonic wasnt playing a character he was playing stages.

Im sorry, but at least in Grand Finals, and the Crow/Cold match prior earlier in top 8, i didnt see Crow v Cold.. I saw Crow v Unblockable Corner Swapping, Launching Interactables.

 

[Skedar70]

So just because he loses to Deadshot he is bad?

I saw sonic fox doing stuff I have never seen other CC do. CC players are so scared of charging that gun that they never do (or only charge it once at the most) and therefore never get to his good stuff.

How did Sonicfox do it? He even did it against Theos Superman who is the best superman and has all the tools to get in on CC (Lasers, air dashes).

 

[ATL Jones Bro3]

I'm not gonna say anything about the character but Sonic Fox is far more aggressive charging his trait than basically every other cold player. That may have something to do with his success compared to others.

 

[B-EZ_1000]

Sonic fox showed off the best way to use Cold . He was a defensive wall making it impossible for people to get in. The only time he used cold in a match-up where Cold had to get in tho was against Biohazard's Deadshot and Fox loss that one bad and switched to Red Hood .

 

[Skedar70]

The way sonic fox uses CC is actually hilarious.

 

[CompleteMadness]

I'm glad we got to see CC in tournament.Honesty, I'm kind of suprised it took long though because CC does extremely well in some MUs, great pocket character to have. He can just cheese it out full screen with repetitive level 2 trait and some characters can't do anything about it. Sonic showed exactly how to play it, was very fun to watch!

 

[Toonstrack]

I really dont want to put the community on blast but mostly all Im reading so far is that because he sucks against Deadshot and a few other characters that makes Cold bad? Ive been playing this game since day 1 an d I can count the amount of times I faced a cold player on my hands. Theres definitely an issue of many just not being willing to try him out here. After this tourney I may even try to pick him up.

Heres the thing, Sonic only had to counterpick 1 time against what is probably the best MU against Cold, yet he was able to beat literally the best Superman player, who clearly was confident in his Superman since he didnt switch, and everyone else using only Cold aside from the aforemented Red Hood counterpick. And yes, this is SonicFox were talking about, hes possibly the most skilled player of this game in the world but still... I think what the other guy said was accurate, we should be looking at CC further with this instead of just arguing 'he was good the whole time' or 'he is still bad'

I was one of the ones who just avoided Cold completely, he just was boring to me, but with these developments he is starting to interest me.

 

[Zoidberg747]

Can you please explain the intricacies of the cold vs deadshot match?

It's been a while but sure.

Like you've said before, the ball is always in Deadshot's court. Same with this matchup. If you try to charge trait for more than half a sec, he can shoot and stop you from doing it, or use rifle. If you try and do what sonic did it won't really work, because as deadshot you have no reason to go in. Wall also doesn't do much in this matchup because you can't do it fast enough to cover multiple shots, and Deadshot can easily recover in time to block MB wall. Deadshot just has to do a quick wrist shot to destroy MB icicle if Cold tries that.

Similarly, Deadshot has no reason to give up position if Cold tries to walk him to the corner. Up close his b1 and f2 outrange anything cold can do and will send Cold fullscreen. He can easily poke out of Cold's pressure. If Cold somehow gets lvl 2 trait and gets deadshot in it then Deadshot might have problems, but by the time Cold gets lvl 2 trait in this MU Deadshot should've gotten enough chip in to take almost a whole life bar.

Deadshot also will have the meter advantage throughout the whole match. IIRC, pushblocking covers most of the ice field (lvl 2 trait) shenanigans and resets the timer, so Deadshot can easily pushblock any incoming pressure or back up and start shooting again. I don't see how this isn't a 7-3 in Deadshot's favor, but if you have a different experience I would love to hear it.

What is "lazy" about a character having very defined strengths and weaknesses? The goal cannot be to make every character well-rounded because it's a needlessly complicated route that will not pay off in the end.

Games have made characters with asymmetrical designs for years and many of them do have large imbalances in the character matchups, and this is very often the price of having distinct strengths and weaknesses on characters. I don't know why all of a sudden there has been this big blowup where everyone agreed that polarized tools are now symptomatic results of intentionally making characters "bad," but it's a terrible take.

Bringing it back to Cold, no one is saying that he doesn't have issues, and I'll never understand why this is always brought up when someone dares to say a character may be better than what is commonly thought. The argument is not that he doesn't have weaknesses or bad matchups; the argument is that, against what appeared to be all common knowledge, a character that was literally described as "not worth being in the game" won a major tournament largely by himself. Are Cold players mediocre and simply not taking advantage of his strengths in certain matchups? Was this an anomaly? Was this just an example of the best player of the game outshining his opponents?

There's a lot of questions to be had, but what should normally be a fun and exciting development has pretty much changed to a bunch of players chest-thumping and shutting down any type of discussion. It's brutal.

Lol what? This all started because a bunch of people came into this thread trying to put the Cold community on blast for downplaying. There was no discussion. And as I mentioned before, most cold's were well aware of his strengths and good matchups before Fox played him. You are trying to change the narrative to the big bad cold community ruining discussion, but what actually happened was a bunch of bandwagoners popping up in this thread to talk trash. Which in and of itself is fine, it's a forum, but don't act like there was some important discussion happening.

I guess we just have to agree to disagree on polarized characters. I've personally never liked them and found them to be poor design.

 

[Hiyomoto]

Even though I loved Sonicfox's captain cold, he did do some dirty gimmicks. Like when I saw him do D1 into close icicle, he's a mad man. People aren't even talking about Captain Colds restands off air juggles which is probably his dirtiest tech in the corner. This community does downplay him extremely but they have a point. There's some MU that seem frustrating to get around such as the Deadshot or Supergirl.

 

[neveradestroyer]

The high dash punch nerf to Supernan literally changed that M.U.. before... He just had to zone zone zone.... and when you dash in... Bam!, Mb dash punch in the face and back to zoning again. now that It can be ducked and punished, the gameplan changed a lot.... The match up feels 5/5 now.

 

[M.D.]

LOL some people.

Bla bla beat the best superman on the planet. So basically you're taking for granted that Theo actually played cyborg skynet perfect using every tool flawleslly and OMG GUESS WHAT, COLD BEAT HIM.

So basically Cold is better than Superman. LOL

Theo played like crap. Superman is a bazillion times better than Cold. With both players at the same skill Superman will OBLITERATE Cold. Deal with it and stop spreading bullshit.

 

[M2Dave]

What NRS did was the worst thing to happen for Cold (and for the other bottom tier chars). They nerfed almost every top tier, and buffed this super-chick. They, also, nerfed even more Captain Cold, something that he DIDN'T need. He didn't need the nerfhammer. He needed tweaks or the buffhammer to be viable and finally a threat against the other characters, excluding the CQC ones. Now everybody is wondering why NRS isn't listening to us, and listens to this fox by showing the characters.

NRS is very likely not listening to you because your "buff hammers" would create a plethora of 7:3 match ups, mostly against characters Captain Cold already beats. If Captain Cold were to fight characters like Deadshot and Dr. Fate on even terms, NRS would either have to massively buff his anti-zoning and footsies game, which would evidently affect his existing good match ups, or redesign the character entirely, particularly level 2 trait and the MB ice puddle, which, I suspect, would not be well-received by most Captain Cold players.

You mentioned Supergirl who has a versatile and less polarizing character design than Captain Cold.
She does not perform as well as Captain Cold against characters like Flash and Scarecrow, but to compensate she probably has a more symmetric match up chart.

Even if you disagree with Captain Cold's character design and the concept of a utility character, Sonic Fox proved that the character has a place in tournaments, at least as a secondary, so all the "unworthy of being on the character select screen" hyperbole has to stop if your arguments are to be taken seriously and not be ridiculed.

 

[M.D.]

The "not worthy on the screen" bit is indeed aberrant, but the character is definitively not "fine" and "in the right place" in the game. He still needs small buffs and tweaks.

 

[haketh]

The "not worthy on the screen" bit is indeed aberrant, but the character is definitively not "fine" and "in the right place" in the game. He still needs small buffs and tweaks.

For that to happen you'd have to nerf & remove things that slide his positive MUs way over to his side. I think the character has issues of like to see adjusted but if it means he becomes less unique it's probably not worth it. Nothing really wrong with him being a Utility character as @KingHippo put it.

 

[foxof42]

What I'm seeing everyone agree on is Cold struggling with zoning, but that it fits in his design. Would it be a gross overbuff to give MB deathcicle more than one hit before it went away? I feel like it's the next logical step in his design - have puddle to keep out the rushdown and icicle to keep out the zoning, all to serve the purpose of charging trait. Too crazy? It was the one thing I didn't see Sonicfox use, so if that's the measuring stick... *shrug*
Btw, yesterday a Joker zoned me hard and it was the weirdest, WEIRDEST feeling. Honestly have had easier times against Fate.

 

[Noodle Monkey]

While I see the arguments for the idea of a utility character, I personally see it as an excuse not to buff characters thereby making the developers' job easier. In my opinion CC could just do with a few more offensive options (e.g. A low hitting string, 12DB3 or making the all high string hit mid at some point in the string) just so you don't have to be SonicFox just to make the character viable

 

[foxof42]

While I see the arguments for the idea of a utility character, I personally see it as an excuse not to buff characters thereby making the developers' job easier. In my opinion CC could just do with a few more offensive options (e.g. A low hitting string, 12DB3 or making the all high string hit mid at some point in the string) just so you don't have to be SonicFox just to make the character viable

Literally the most practical and most requested changes. 12DB3 please.

 

[snort]

NRS is very likely not listening to you because your "buff hammers" would create a plethora of 7:3 match ups, mostly against characters Captain Cold already beats. If Captain Cold were to fight characters like Deadshot and Dr. Fate on even terms, NRS would either have to massively buff his anti-zoning and footsies game, which would evidently affect his existing good match ups, or redesign the character entirely, particularly level 2 trait and the MB ice puddle, which, I suspect, would not be well-received by most Captain Cold players.

What are you talking about? The only buffs Cold players are looking for are mainly fixes. 12 connect to ice puddle, BA low lightening not going through Ice Blocks, trait cancel after 213. Only buff is merrily making force field more viable. These changes aren't making any 7:3 matchups nor will they make his horrible matchups against zoners to even.