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General/Other - Blood God Blood for the Blood God! (Variant discussion)

KeyserSoze

Fabled Villain
I've been having a lot more success with Blood God lately. I'm becoming a bigger and bigger proponent of abusing regular throw with Blood God. His throw is just really solid. It has awesome reach, d3 throw is basically a tick throw on hit, and it has enough hit advantage to make totems and sun rays safe against the entire cast. His regular throw is barely worse than Sun Choke, lol. It does more damage than Sun Choke at levels 1 and 2, and with damage totem activated, it does just as much damage as Sun Choke at level 3. And again, it has enough hit advantage to make sun rays safe - which is enormous.
 

Belial

Noob
You all know the combo f1b2~db1 totem, it deals about 40% damage (42% at max)
I found an interesting application of blood totem here
f1b2~db3,d1~exairgrab,f2,throw = 30%
This combo ends right in time for totem to expire which regains around 5% life and some meter, you also get a free sunray here so probably a few percent more health and meter gain. Unfortunately a throw can be broken but it is still its a nice option to have. Keep in mind that it doesnt replenish opponent meter during combo (and even drains it) so it might be great as a round ender, if your opponent almost has that bar for breaker

Another interesting application of the former with crystal totem
f1b2~db1,d1~exairgrab,f2,b32 = 39%
this combo nets a safe jump into free mixup on your opponent , throw will deal 16% with totem buff
 
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mattnin

Noob
Yep. I basically only set up blood offering with the obsidian totem active.
I've been using this strategy for blood offering more lately especially since obsidian is 50% dmg now. I sometimes like to take the risk now when I have blood offering active and obsidian expiring to setup for crystal and insane damage. Just my regular bnb will do over 60% dmg this way and with one combo turn the tides of any match.
 

Shufflez

Noob
Instead of blood offering in matchups where you're gonna be in the corner most time, I'm thinking about just popping up a raw EX sunray ( if we manage to get the damage reduction totem up ) that can be full combo punished, while the totem is up they should take more or the same damage as you by punishing the sunray. I'm not sure how many characters out there can do 30%+ corner damage while the 50% dmg reduction totem is active or have a move that will change your position away from the sun ray, I'd be fine with them just throwing me out of the corner and cornering themsevles. Any thoughts on this?
 

mkl

Poopbutt.
Blood God still doesn't have ways to really "open" people up after this patch but he's significantly better. Easier to combo into totems and safer ways on block to get them out. Obsidian halves all damage now and Blood gives more of both super and health. Blood God has to be played very turtle-esque and go for punishes when he can get them. Right now I'd say setting Obsidian during neutral is essential and only use damage totem when down on life or when you hit a f1b2. Blood totem is still pretty useless unless you want to knock them below a bar after f1b2 so they can't armor wake up but that's supremely situational. To be honest, I think it's a notch above Sun God now and if not outright better it's right on par. They're both still out-tooled by War God though.
 

Qwark28

Joker waiting room
Variations are not supposed to be able to play against every matchup in the game.

Sun god I personally think is just fine right now. Some matchups like Tempest Lao/KW Goro I would still switch to war god but that's just how the game goes.
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
Variations are not supposed to be able to play against every matchup in the game.

Sun god I personally think is just fine right now. Some matchups like Tempest Lao/KW Goro I would still switch to war god but that's just how the game goes.
Better question is, what are those MUs where you'd rather switch from WG to SG.
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
I wouldn't care, I only use war god in extremely bad matchups for sun god, sun god is my default variation.
Well, I wasn't exactly talking about preferences. I understand that people like different things, but when it comes to objective toolset I don't see a good reason to ever pick a Sun God. Pretty much everything he can is possible to emulate with WG, and more it seems.
 

Qwark28

Joker waiting room
Well, I wasn't exactly talking about preferences. I understand that people like different things, but when it comes to objective toolset I don't see a good reason to ever pick a Sun God. Pretty much everything he can is possible to emulate with WG, and more it seems.
War god is a gimmick variation, people like now are throwing out shit like b122 ~ random sword special like candy. Sun god has a much more solid pressure game and makes you want to do stupid stuff in order to avoid the sun choke, causing you to catch people in 45% combos. The fact that you have a 19% unblockable is a huge boon, block a D1, counterpoke with sun choke and watch them try to move at - frames the second time they do it.
 

Qwark28

Joker waiting room
I think war god is going to be played less yolo and more reactionary in the future, the current playstyle of random string into random special is cringeworthy and while it may work in pools on unsuspecting random who have never seen a Kotal, good players will punish you for doing that stuff. You can only go crazy like that vs someone like Scorpion who doesn't have armour.

I abuse those gimmicks if my opponent shows me they can't block but in general I play a 100% reactionary game with EX OSS which I think is the best armoured move in the game.
 

ando1184

Noob
Hi guys I just recently picked this character and this variation is what I'm diving into first. So far I like the style this character plays and the damage is so rewarding but I was curious, does he not have any armored attacks in this variation? I didn't see any when I tested and parry just seems really useless to me. I can't get that move to ever work, even the MB version gets me blown up :(
 

KeyserSoze

Fabled Villain
Hi guys I just recently picked this character and this variation is what I'm diving into first. So far I like the style this character plays and the damage is so rewarding but I was curious, does he not have any armored attacks in this variation? I didn't see any when I tested and parry just seems really useless to me. I can't get that move to ever work, even the MB version gets me blown up :(
Nope. He has no armored attacks, and as a result, he's very susceptible to being rushed down. It's his biggest weakness.
 

ando1184

Noob
Nope. He has no armored attacks, and as a result, he's very susceptible to being rushed down. It's his biggest weakness.
Hmm, I was afraid of that. Well what other improvements to his gameplay does he need aside from an armored move? He seems really good if you're a patient player but his lack of opening people up through gaps or quick poking out of pressure seems to really hurt him.
 

mattnin

Noob
I could be wrong, but I think EX Parry is armored. I've never been able to make much use of it however and I've never seen any videos of anyone whose mastered it. Kotal BG's best wake up is to block lol, it's his only 50/50 mixup, he can either roll and get up fast or lay there longer. Sometimes that trips up the opponent though
 

KeyserSoze

Fabled Villain
I could be wrong, but I think EX Parry is armored. I've never been able to make much use of it however and I've never seen any videos of anyone whose mastered it. Kotal BG's best wake up is to block lol, it's his only 50/50 mixup, he can either roll and get up fast or lay there longer. Sometimes that trips up the opponent though
Well, yeah, but it's not an "attack"
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
If parry (at least EX one) could prevent opponent from cancelling parried move so that his offence would stop right there, it would be a good substitute for armor. But for now it isn't. You need to make multi-layered read and spend more than one bar to make it work most of the time.
IMHO he needs that, even if at the price of having that parry damage buff reduced.
 

Qwark28

Joker waiting room
You all know the combo f1b2~db1 totem, it deals about 40% damage (42% at max)
I found an interesting application of blood totem here
f1b2~db3,d1~exairgrab,f2,throw = 30%
This combo ends right in time for totem to expire which regains around 5% life and some meter, you also get a free sunray here so probably a few percent more health and meter gain. Unfortunately a throw can be broken but it is still its a nice option to have. Keep in mind that it doesnt replenish opponent meter during combo (and even drains it) so it might be great as a round ender, if your opponent almost has that bar for breaker

Another interesting application of the former with crystal totem
f1b2~db1,d1~exairgrab,f2,b32 = 39%
this combo nets a safe jump into free mixup on your opponent , throw will deal 16% with totem buff
"This setup can be tech rolled and woken out off. The problem is not the tech roll, it's the reversal/wakeup after.

You can do the exact same setup with 212 which should work just fine though"