Dear NRS: Why was the Joker Nerfed so badly from Injustice 1?

[Vengeance135]

Fair enough. I was more so asking if anyone had seen these players or had commentary on the matter rather than saying Pig's word is gospel.

I think there's probably a happy medium between Joker downplaying & up-playing. At least that's the case with most of the lower tier characters (luv u Swamp).

I know absolutely nothing about swamp thing so I wouldn't want to comment. Our frustration is coming from 4 years experience with a character that has steadily declined from being the worst to unviable at this point and we've had 4 years of this nonsense

@Jack White @MrSunshine My bad for the profanity, that guys comment really pissed me off.

 

[Vengeance135]

I'm pretty bad at explaining matchups. But if you have a character or player in mind I'll try to setup a set that I can record and post to start some matchup discussions.

Are you on ps4?

 

[RNLDRGN]

I know absolutely nothing about swamp thing so I wouldn't want to comment. Our frustration is coming from 4 years experience with a character that has steadily declined from being the worst to unviable at this point and we've had 4 years of this nonsense

@Jack White @MrSunshine My bad for the profanity, that guys comment really pissed me off.

I mean.... to be fair. Joker was considered one of, if not THE worst in IGAU, but he could still mop you if you didn't know the MU and counterpick him properly. I've seen both Sonic, Grr, and a few other Joker players do it.

While he may not be better this time around, I'm sure it's a similar situation. I think Swamp Thing is undoubtedly the worst character in the game right now, but I'm still pretty confident I can score wins against most of the rushdown characters if they aren't super familiar with the MU.

That'll of course change as the game ages, but it's not like Joker is helplessly losing every single fight he enters.

 

[CasualPlayer]

I mean.... to be fair. Joker was considered one of, if not THE worst in IGAU, but he could still mop you if you didn't know the MU and counterpick him properly. I've seen both Sonic, Grr, and a few other Joker players do it.

While he may not be better this time around, I'm sure it's a similar situation. I think Swamp Thing is undoubtedly the worst character in the game right now, but I'm still pretty confident I can score wins against most of the rushdown characters if they aren't super familiar with the MU.

That'll of course change as the game ages, but it's not like Joker is helplessly losing every single fight he enters.

Aquaman match up seems extremely hard for Joker. His normals easily out range jokers. can't use any projectiles against him without getting punished. Don't even think about jumping in against him. and by some miracle we get in Aquaman traits nullifies all that effort and now we are back to square one. which is getting chipped into oblivion.

 

[BrianTheBEAST]

I mean.... to be fair. Joker was considered one of, if not THE worst in IGAU, but he could still mop you if you didn't know the MU and counterpick him properly. I've seen both Sonic, Grr, and a few other Joker players do it.

While he may not be better this time around, I'm sure it's a similar situation. I think Swamp Thing is undoubtedly the worst character in the game right now, but I'm still pretty confident I can score wins against most of the rushdown characters if they aren't super familiar with the MU.

That'll of course change as the game ages, but it's not like Joker is helplessly losing every single fight he enters.

Respectfully, I'm not satisfied with just beating those who aren't familiar with the mu. I think that what you described is exactly why we want our character to be balanced out. No, he's not helpless in every fight (skill of course is a factor), but the tools we have are very insufficient as of right now.

 

[trufenix]

And on the behalf of the joker community if you aren't going to support us then please...

FUCK OFF.

Telling everyone who disagrees with you they "don't understand" (Shazam/Joker main, btw) or that your community have been choir boys for 5 years (also horseshit, because Stev0 and Quark are part of this community) is not going to do anything. Neither is replying "Fuck off" to your detractors. What if paolo thinks you're full of shit, should he just fuck off as well or actually sit down and read this diatribe for knowledge?

This thread has no match up data. No videos. No lab work. Not even a concrete mention of all these other character's great tools and WHY they're better than joker's. Just a lot of bitchy posts about how shit Joker is and how sick of it you are. Should they just give him Fate's push and Catwoman's mixups and Harley's zoning and I1 Bane him up just cause you said so?

All you've said are his tools are bad and need to be fixed. You've provided no insight into what specifically should be address, how, or even why. I personally agree with you that Joker is a little bit fucked, but this is a shit thread that will do nothing about it except let you and the other loudmouths in the Joker forum vent some steam.

 

[RNLDRGN]

Respectfully, I'm not satisfied with just beating those who aren't familiar with the mu. I think that what you described is exactly why we want our character to be balanced out. No, he's not helpless in every fight (skill of course is a factor), but the tools we have are very insufficient as of right now.

You're right. I'm just trying to be optimistic.

Although it is awesome to play a rare character like Swamp or Joker and hear someone say "man I don't really know much about this MU" and you get to throw all your shenanigans at them.

But for every one of those there's a dozen Batman, Black Adam, Aquaman, Supes, Supergirl, etc MU's where they get to just push buttons the whole match and u ded.

 

[ShaolinGunFu]

every legacy character has been nerfed from 1, you have to put in context- i2 joker is fighting i2 batman not i1

 

[RNLDRGN]

every legacy character has been nerfed from 1, you have to put in context- i2 joker is fighting i2 batman not i1

Batman and Black Adam are arguably just as good in I2 as IGAU.

But yes, most others have been watered down as you noted.

 

[Reauxbot]

Either everyone is wrong and will be blown up in the future....

...or NRS has decided that Joker is the Dan of the Injustice franchise.

Don't underestimate Dan. I've seen some people play Dan. And tear some shit up. Of course they had to do work

 

[Jack White]

Telling everyone who disagrees with you they "don't understand" (Shazam/Joker main, btw) or that your community have been choir boys for 5 years (also horseshit, because Stev0 and Quark are part of this community) is not going to do anything. Neither is replying "Fuck off" to your detractors. What if paolo thinks you're full of shit, should he just fuck off as well or actually sit down and read this diatribe for knowledge?

This thread has no match up data. No videos. No lab work. Not even a concrete mention of all these other character's great tools and WHY they're better than joker's. Just a lot of bitchy posts about how shit Joker is and how sick of it you are. Should they just give him Fate's push and Catwoman's mixups and Harley's zoning and I1 Bane him up just cause you said so?

All you've said are his tools are bad and need to be fixed. You've provided no insight into what specifically should be address, how, or even why. I personally agree with you that Joker is a little bit fucked, but this is a shit thread that will do nothing about it except let you and the other loudmouths in the Joker forum vent some steam.

A lot of the stuff you mentioned aren't there actually are. You're not reading our points and are seeing any criticism at a character we've labbed and played with for 4 years as senseless whining. It's incredibly patronizing and disrespectful. While Vengeance went overboard, you're not making a coherent argument.

- The Joker has no reliable starters besides his mids.
- His j2, one of his most important tools from the previous game was heavily nerfed.
- He has no wakeup moves besides his counter (which only works on mids and overheads) so he's easily pressured.
- He has no advanced movement options and his jump is in a really low arc, making it tremendously difficult for him to get in on zoners.
- His trait's effectiveness is abysmal. Faster forward walkspeed/dashes with a faster jump don't actually help him approach better since his movement remains as fairly linear.
- His projectiles are very slow. His gas can for example, is over 40 frames of start up.

He's essentially a character that's bad at zoning, bad at dealing with zoners, bad at opening you up when he gets up close, and bad at dealing with pressure when his opponent is close. His whole game is about getting you in the corner since that's his main strength, but when he's outside of it he's too weak to be viable.

All of this has been said before in the thread, but you're reading past it and insisting we don't know our own character's weaknesses and that we need to adapt. We've done that for almost half a decade and now we just got more nerfs. I hate this mentality in TYM where no one can know anything until 6 months has passed, especially with a legacy character. That's not true, sometimes characters are just obviously bad on launch. What makes this especially egregious is that they've had years of development to fix this, but instead they decided to nerf Joker heavily. Please try and understand our frustration first before condescending to us.

 

[Chongo]

Are there seriously people arguing against joker buffs?

 

[Vengeance135]

Telling everyone who disagrees with you they "don't understand" (Shazam/Joker main, btw) or that your community have been choir boys for 5 years (also horseshit, because Stev0 and Quark are part of this community) is not going to do anything. Neither is replying "Fuck off" to your detractors. What if paolo thinks you're full of shit, should he just fuck off as well or actually sit down and read this diatribe for knowledge?

This thread has no match up data. No videos. No lab work. Not even a concrete mention of all these other character's great tools and WHY they're better than joker's. Just a lot of bitchy posts about how shit Joker is and how sick of it you are. Should they just give him Fate's push and Catwoman's mixups and Harley's zoning and I1 Bane him up just cause you said so?

All you've said are his tools are bad and need to be fixed. You've provided no insight into what specifically should be address, how, or even why. I personally agree with you that Joker is a little bit fucked, but this is a shit thread that will do nothing about it except let you and the other loudmouths in the Joker forum vent some steam.

I will clearly tell ANYBODY who developed and tested joker how much of an idiot they are for developing a character who struggled throughout the entire first game and then getting nerfed to absolute shit in the second one for no reason and you clearly didn't read this thread because we clearly stated why he is bad you obviously didn't read it and @StevoSuprem0 and @Qwark28 as well as, dozens of other joker players have LABBED and poured YEARS into this character and have posted it for YEARS. So not only do we mention it in this thread, everything found on this character is on this website and all the problems the character has ARE mentioned IN THIS THREAD AND ON THIS SITE. This thread is a very simple one, we are very much tired of being ignored. It's not just about the characters the Joker loses to, it's about the inconsistencies the character STILL has SINCE HIS DEBUT IN INJUSTICE 1 and instead of helping this character, they make him worse. His MU vs legacy characters are WORSE now then they were in injustice 1. So, again, please READ THE ENTIRETY OF THIS THREAD AND WHAT WE ALL SAID.

And as a Joker player, you should understand the struggle and unfairness the character has seen, unless you aren't at a high level yet, in that case, it's understandable. But even you, should see that nobody in this community will listen unless it's a well-known or top player bitching. You get what I'm saying?

Are there seriously people arguing against joker buffs?

Dude I love you.

 

[Vengeance135]

every legacy character has been nerfed from 1, you have to put in context- i2 joker is fighting i2 batman not i1

Batman still has his main tools and jokers main tools that helped him stand a chance against batman were nerfed. Batman vs joker injustice 2 is still the same, if not worse. Jokers otg and j2 helped him a lot in this MU, as well as, acid flower restands but that's all gone. The only thing batman doesn't have that shut joker down is a mid projectile.

 

[BrianTheBEAST]

Telling everyone who disagrees with you they "don't understand" (Shazam/Joker main, btw) or that your community have been choir boys for 5 years (also horseshit, because Stev0 and Quark are part of this community) is not going to do anything. Neither is replying "Fuck off" to your detractors. What if paolo thinks you're full of shit, should he just fuck off as well or actually sit down and read this diatribe for knowledge?

This thread has no match up data. No videos. No lab work. Not even a concrete mention of all these other character's great tools and WHY they're better than joker's. Just a lot of bitchy posts about how shit Joker is and how sick of it you are. Should they just give him Fate's push and Catwoman's mixups and Harley's zoning and I1 Bane him up just cause you said so?

All you've said are his tools are bad and need to be fixed. You've provided no insight into what specifically should be address, how, or even why. I personally agree with you that Joker is a little bit fucked, but this is a shit thread that will do nothing about it except let you and the other loudmouths in the Joker forum vent some steam.

To address your complaints: One of the glaring weaknesses of joker is starting his offense in the first place. Specifically, he has a low B1, sweep D3, and ranged D2 to use in the neutral.
So how do we start this offense? Well, Joker has no overheads (I guess you can say B2 but it's really slow and doesn't give joker much). Therefore, an opponent just has to block low until they see a jump in. Going more in depth, even if you're lucky enough to get a B1, that can only be followed up with crowbar or B13 (mb gun would be nice but it has whiff issues!!). Crowbar no longer otgs, and both of these enders don't lead to anything by the joker. So no offense after this, just back to the neutral, where joker does not excel at all whatsoever
Okay, so what about D2. You can do D2 teeth, which is pretty much pointless unless you got them near a corner. Most of the time, it's pretty useless because walking back will most often negate the teeth. You can do D2 MB low canister, which can easily be jumped out of and punish us instead. Even if they respect MB low canister, they butchered our + frames anyways so it gives us, again.... nothing. Right now, D2 Crowbar is our best option, but as discussed earlier, there's no otg.... so we get a dash and then back to neutral.
Not much to say about D3. It's a sweep. At certain ranges it can lead to an ambiguous J2, but that can easily be countered by backdash or wakeup.
NOTE: These aren't mu specific things. This applies to every character in the game. Every character can easily counter us because it is excruciatingly difficult to get offense started in the first place.

 

[Vengeance135]

To address your complaints: One of the glaring weaknesses of joker is starting his offense in the first place. Specifically, he has a low B1, sweep D3, and ranged D2 to use in the neutral.
So how do we start this offense? Well, Joker has no overheads (I guess you can say B2 but it's really slow and doesn't give joker much). Therefore, an opponent just has to block low until they see a jump in. Going more in depth, even if you're lucky enough to get a B1, that can only be followed up with crowbar or B13 (mb gun would be nice but it has whiff issues!!). Crowbar no longer otgs, and both of these enders don't lead to anything by the joker. So no offense after this, just back to the neutral, where joker does not excel at all whatsoever
Okay, so what about D2. You can do D2 teeth, which is pretty much pointless unless you got them near a corner. Most of the time, it's pretty useless because walking back will most often negate the teeth. You can do D2 MB low canister, which can easily be jumped out of and punish us instead. Even if they respect MB low canister, they butchered our + frames anyways so it gives us, again.... nothing. Right now, D2 Crowbar is our best option, but as discussed earlier, there's no otg.... so we get a dash and then back to neutral.
Not much to say about D3. It's a sweep. At certain ranges it can lead to an ambiguous J2, but that can easily be countered by backdash or wakeup.
NOTE: These aren't mu specific things. This applies to every character in the game. Every character can easily counter us because it is excruciatingly difficult to get offense started in the first place.

Dude I love you, my salt has run it's course and you guys still keep it real. @BrianTheBEAST @Jack White

 

[JustPressingButtons]

I'm sorry to say it, joker isn't good and needs help.

 

[scarsunseen]

I think I'm pretty well-known for my preference of playing setup characters with high execution. With that said, Joker sucks and I will not be maining him. His wake-up is garbage. His trait is garbage. He gets out-zoned by better zoners. He loses in close combat too. I see no reason to play this character at a high level.

 

[TarkatanDentist]

It seems like Joker is becoming to Injustice what Zelda is to the Smash Bros series (bottom tier 15 years and running!)

To anyone arguing 'all legacy characters got nerfed':

a) That's not strictly true - a few of them stayed about the same (Superman, Black Adam, Batman etc.)

b) Even most of the ones that did get toned down still have much more utilisable strengths than Joker does and don't suffer for it (Catwoman, Harley Quinn etc.)

c) Joker is probably one of the few legacy characters where it would have been a good idea not to tone him down and let him keep his dirt. It's hard to imagine him being crushingly unfair with it even in the context of Injustice 2.

 

[scarsunseen]

Btw, I never played Injustice 1, so I can't really compare his Inj1 version to the current iteration. With that said, Inj2 Joker isn't worth playing seriously, in my opinion.

Just a thought... Maybe have his HA trait make projectiles go through him, like Catwoman's evade.

 

[Vengeance135]

It seems like Joker is becoming to Injustice what Zelda is to the Smash Bros series (bottom tier 15 years and running!)

To anyone arguing 'all legacy characters got nerfed':

a) That's not strictly true - a few of them stayed about the same (Superman, Black Adam, Batman etc.)

b) Even most of the ones that did get toned down still have much more utilisable strengths than Joker does and don't suffer for it (Catwoman, Harley Quinn etc.)

c) Joker is probably one of the few legacy characters where it would have been a good idea not to tone him down and let him keep his dirt. It's hard to imagine him being crushingly unfair with it even in the context of Injustice 2.

Dude, I love you.

 

[RM Truth]

I wouldn't call him unviable, but he could probably use some buffs.

 

[Vengeance135]

I wouldn't call him unviable, but he could probably use some buffs.

We could argue his viability but we've already proven so much in this thread.
I don't know you but I still love you for saying he could use them.

 

[RM Truth]

We could argue his viability but we've already proven so much in this thread.
I don't know you but I still love you for saying he could use them.

I'm just a guy that thinks the Joker is really cool. If he had a decent advancing string that he could whiff punish with, and the advantage off MB Crowbar back, that would make him a lot better.

 

[Vengeance135]

I'm just a guy that thinks the Joker is really cool. If he had a decent advancing string that he could whiff punish with, and the advantage off MB Crowbar back, that would make him a lot better.

Honestly, all of the mentioned things in this thread don't need to be fixed. We aren't asking for NRS to give us a perfect character, we are asking for NRS to actually realize the joker isn't good and to buff him appropriately. We really didn't want to resort to complaining but after almost 4 years and playing a new game where he lost some of his better tools for nothing is was about time we did it. The only way things seem to get done is if people complain long enough. Which really sucks