i think darrius needs some help imo but he is also only one careless buff away from being completely broken. but i have an idea (big and red if you want to skip the explanation):
Darrius main thing is to end a juggle with knockdown into hard-to block (quick low/overhead) setup (k, fk). darrius fk overhead can be delayed freely over the duration of roughly a 2-hit string. i have tested this with a couple of characters and the best for this setup are those with a double low like raidens f43, so darrius has 2 chances for the hard-to-blockable. but these setups can be avoided in 2 ways:
- 1st: if darrius hits early, the wakeup can be delayed and darrius spent a whole bar for nothing
- 2nd: if darrius hits late, the setup can be armored through and darrius spent a whole bar for nothing
it is a guess, but still too easy to avoid to be worth a whole kameo bar, especially given the fact that the opponent could still block the setup. the attacker will play without kameo for a whole round for nothing if they guess the 50/50 wrong.
there is one alternative to set this up: do it when the opponent has no meter, so he can only delay his wakeup and you can always go for the late darrius mixup. this also makes the setup more viable for chars with only mid->low strings or sth. the problem is that this setup is best done as kombo ender, so your opponent will almost always have a bar, even if he has zero when the combo starts, which makes this setup kinda obsolete as well
this leads me to my buff idea:
add a meter drain to darrius 1-bar costing ambush (k). this way he will preserve his playstyle but will be more effective in it. if you make k cost just half a bar, it will be his only tool used while the other tools have the same issues. just lowering the regeneration time will lead to a similar outcome. but draining a bar of meter with k will lead to guaranteed hard-to block setups more often, usually once a round. i think thats fair as its an inescapable reset into hard to block which you can get 300+ damage from. no need to have this more than once a round. i realize kameo wakeups might still be a factor in this but i dont think its that bad, or that there could be another work around found.
