Hey guys, great stuff. This topic finally got me to register an account.
Before I get started, I want to thank Ryx, DoomBawkz, and the rest of the Santa Prisca Crew for their great tech and their encouragement on this forum. Bane may not be as good as I hoped but you guys are the best.
Now, I'm by no means a tournament level Bane player but I'd like to think that I'm ok and capable of noticing flaws in his gameplan. So here's what I've noticed. The first two are the most important IMO, the others are just brain droppings:
Raging Charge - this HAS to be cancelleable. It has bad startup, cannot be cancelled, and can be fully and completely punished. One of those properties HAS to go, because I just described a subpar move that only works because your opponent hasn't figured it out.
Venom - Bane's trait is not working beyond level 1. Here's a thought experiment for you: if every character had a dedicated button that gave them a level 3 venom effect, how often would you see it used? Answer: almost never, except for in guaranteed combos that could finish off their opponent, because Level 3 Venom is waaaaay too much risk for not enough reward and is only useful as a Hail Mary or for making super-sweet YouTube combo videos.
So here's a couple of thoughts on Venom:
1) Keep the cooldown penalties to damage and movement the same, but the cooldown period is now based on how long, in total, you were under the influence of Venom. So if you go Level 1 for 7 seconds, Level 2 for 6 seconds, and Level 3 for 6 seconds, your cooldown will be much higher then someone who goes directly to Level 3 for 6 seconds. Also, holding the trait button down would cancel Venom, and this could be done during round changes. This change would mean that Bane would actually be able to use his Venom tactically and not eat a big penalty for nothing. I feel like this level of control and APPROPRIATE risk vs. reward for Venom usage fixes a lot of problems with Bane.
2) If #1 isn't feasible, at least make small edits. Level 3 should add armor-breaking to all moves and should last for one second longer. Eliminate or massively lessen the "damage taken" penalty for all levels of Venom. It's still horrible to hit with a monster combo and do 12% damage, but at least you don't literally lose a bar of life off one combo by your opponent.
Other thoughts, these probably couldn't/wouldn't happen:
Venom Uppercut/Double Punch - I'm not sure what the thinking was on having two moves that, when you burn meter, add piddling damage and knock the opponent away by over half a screen. This is not what Bane wants. Yes, the wall-carry part is nice, but the spacing and lack of follow up - on two different specials no less - is silly. Keep Venom Uppercut in it's current form, change Double Punch so that, when meter-burned, it does additional damage and knock the opponent a much shorter distance so that follow ups become easier.
Ring Toss - Awesome, another move that 3/4ths of the time sends the opponent over a half-screen away! Add a meter burn property that causes ground bounce instead. At least do something interesting with this move - Venom Uppercut does fine duty as an anti-air already, so make this move shine.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
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