I still don’t understand why NRS does this. They’ll overnerf the characters that are dominating the meta, but they don’t simultaneously buff the hardly used/lower tiered characters. And when I say “characters” in reference to this and MK1 I’m talking about the Kameos as well.
The approach I’ve been advocating for for I don’t even know how long is to yes, still nerf the characters that are dominating the meta. But they only need to be slightly nerfed if you also buff the characters that need buffing as well. If they stay with this trend that they’re currently on, eventually the game will turn into an even more boring version of MK11. And I actually liked MK11 but even I will admit that it was a fairly boring game.
Like tbh, I’d rather them not do any balance changes compared to them completely gutting characters. If you’re not a top player or content creator that can put a lot of time into the game, the time you DO invest into the game is super valuable. So if that time investment becomes completely irrelevant after they alter characters SO much, it’s pretty tough to not only start over, but now when you’re labbing you know that what you’re labbing could very well also be a waste of time in the not so distant future. It’s just a terrible approach and again, it’s what causes people to drop the game. ¯\(ツ)/¯
tbh i dont see any character gutted. lets look at some details:
- cyrax copter being a whole bar makes him just like other kameos who can enhance their moves by holding. goros stomp = 1 bar, kano charge = 1 bar, lao buzzsaw = 1 bar and so on. and dont forget he got actually FASTER regeneration time on horicopter plus the hit reaction fixed (so maybe you can now get some consistent combos off of it).
- the enhanced damage scaling applies only to ~10 moves which seemed semi-broken to combo from anyways. it is completely in line with the pre-existing high damage scaling from throws or stuff like haviks unblockable. this seems to me like an actual fix to bring the game closer to its original intention.
- barakas copter combos now do 400+ instead of 500+ as ive seen on youtube and he cant do safe launcher into mixup 2 TIMES IN A ROW anymore. i dont see that as anything but "fine".
- enhanced regeneration delay after using the same kameo move 2 times in one combo isnt that much of a thing either. the benefit of doing stuff like 2 scorpion juggles in one combo was usually 30-50 more damage and now it will often be even less with the enhanced scaling. and you can still do it to close out rounds.
- raiden got hit and thats fine, i personally would have thought that nerfing damage and scaling from f34 would be the way, but thats a thing testers must know better than me.
- kung lao kameos launching reversal seemed like an oversight to me in the first place as soynas leg grab doesnt lauch as reversal too.
overall, this patch puts cyrax more in line with other kameos, puts baraka/cyrax probably into mid tier, massively tones down the raiden/jax damage insanity. the only downside i see is that lao kameo could have had even more reg time on hat. theres no arguing that johnny/lao will be strong now, maybe not as ridiculous as pre-patch or anything with cyrax though. i think the patch will actually help freedom and variety in mk1 because most of the move data is very well designed and its not as overshadowed by a handful of ridiculous tools anymore.
