Unfortunately I feel like the buffs are not enough to make reptile even mid in the game. Imo he is now bottom 5-7 instead of bottom 3. Let me elaborate why the buffs are mostly gimmicks that many people are completely blowing out of proportion:
spit projectile buff:
This is the buff I was most excited for. I was hoping reptile would be able to play a bit of a keep away game if he had the lead with this new tool and be able to trade projectiles when chasing down an opponent in order to change their movement patters. Boy was I wrong. The new spit is borderline useless with its ridiculously long start up frames. You cannot use it against any competent player that uses a character with a teleport so there goes a third of the cast. It is too slow to trade with better zoning characters like Liu, li mei, Quan, kitana, etc. and even against characters without projectiles and teleports, it is so slow that it’s easy to jump on reaction. Honestly they might as well not bothered with this buff
S3 tele cancel:
This is the only buff I believe actually has some purpose just for the sole reason of being able to throw it out in neutral. Obviously if it hits you get great damage and has great range. With that being said, reptile players are getting away with murder right now when utilizing it as block pressure. Since people have been conditioned to block they sky drop, for now they sort of freeze and allow follow up pressure but I’ve already seen good players adapt and not fall for that gimmicky shit. ITS NOT REAL. Even if you use an ambush, it doesn’t have enough time to get out before a quick counter normal is used by the opponent. When doing s4 sky drop cancel, reptile is -8. Unless you used it from max distance, 90% of the cast will be able to counter with their fastest mid and you will have to hold it. That means no you can’t dash back and whiff punish, do a fast d1 or s1. You have to hold it besides doing a risky mb slide.
so in summary S3 sky drop cancel is a good tool to use in neutral but is currently being abused in block which is a complete gimmick and not real. This will be exposed in the next couple of weeks when good players start getting used to the cancel animation.
114 sky drop cancel:
This is the biggest bill being sold right now as far as it being an amazing buff. Honestly it’s pretty bad. If you don’t have an ambush, there is pretty much no point in using this. 114 sky drop cancel on block is -8 and leaves you at a close distance. All the opponent has to do is wait a micro second to make sure the armor isn’t activated and counter with their fastest mid and again reptile has to hold it no matter what. And if the opponent is hit by the 4 in 114, you just wasted a bar and knocked the opponent back. You can’t even connect into the sky drop since it will whiff. What about if you use an ambush kameo? Unfortunately Janet is his best kameo so you wouldn’t use one to begin with but if you do. The situation is still not great. You have to spend half your kameo and a bar to even be able to set up mixup after they block the 114. That still allows a chance for them to armor out. Ontop of that, you have to hope they don’t get hit by the 4 in 114 because if they do, you just wasted a bar and half a kameo essentially and just got a 6% knockdown for your troubles. Honestly you’re better off just using a kameo like Janet and staggering 11 into 114 and using Janet punch to potentially catch them not blocking the 4 in the string.
Fake jump in sky drop cancel:
this is what I was most excited about when I first saw the cancel ability but again I quickly realized this was fake. Currently it works on people because they aren’t used to seeing the cancel animation but even now good players are punishing this. Since the sky drop cancel is no very fast, the opponent has time to literally do the up block, get out of upblock and go in for pressure before reptile can press anything after his cancel animation. I was hoping it would be fast enough to get a b3 punish or at the very least be plus enough to follow in with pressure but the opposite is true.
I see many comments saying reptile is top now but all of this is just click bait by content creators or knee jerk reactions from people that don’t even understand how the buffs truly work. With that being said, is reptile better now with the buffs? Definitely but I would say only slightly better. Instead of bottom 3 he is now bottom 5-7
