I love this character, i consider him my main. he's too cool not to play. But oh my god are his other variations dull to play. They might be "viable" vs people that have absolutely no idea how to play the MU, but seriously who are we kidding. Gimmicks at best. Yolo blade charge and yolo grapple for what? baby dick damage. Am I alone in thinking this?
/salt /booze
Having played most of Season 4 Kombat League with Berserker, I 100% disagree. Berserker is one of the few times I feel like I can stop people from mashing buttons and create legitimate mind games after blocking pokes because of his punch walk and leg kebob. Only this variation allows Baraka to punish people for huge crushing blow damage for trying to flawless block Forward 2,1,2. It makes doing so extremely unattractive. He also gets over 20% meterless for a punish and the opponent cannot break away in this variation off of his punch walk. If you wanna add a bar of meter to it, it goes up to 25%(they can break away from this one, but they can only break away at the end so it's dumb/not worth it to break away at this point).
The corner carry is fantastic on this move too and dealing with his punchwalk is a 50/50 even if you block it. The meter burn is safe -3 but can be flawless blocked while the unsafe version cannot be interrupted with fatal blow or flawless block. So they have to guess right on a poke if the Baraka is gonna cancel into a special or just go into a throw or more pressure and then even if they do guess right and he goes into punch walk, they have to guess which version he's going to do.
Then there's blade charge which gives him a meterless positional change. Most characters have to spend a bar of meter for that and blade charge and punchwalk have godlike corner carry so if he can play well he can get people into the corner quickly and all of his strings and leg kebob give him additional mix ups and if the opponent blocks? He's safe on the mix ups so who cares.
I've been playing a lot of super competent players and even knowing the match up and knowing the punishes doesn't stop Berserker from being potent as hell. Baraka's base kit is excellent and his strong corner carry and safe mix ups compliment his core kit in an extraordinary way.
As for Bone Picker, I mean half screen command grab is solid as hell and spike burst is great anti-air and can be tagged on certain strings to be plus. I don't use it anymore because Berserker provides me everything I need and want because my biggest problem was not being able to force blocks enough, but the mix off of 1,1 and Back 3 command grab etc are really solid. The depth and mind games of Bone Picker is definitely underrated if utilized in a deep, nuanced way.
I get that people like the easy damage of Marauder and what not, but it doesn't invalidate the other two.
I bet you already know it but after his pop up kbs, instant j1 into 112 bf2 or 3 gives a bit more dmg
