I’ve played no one but D’Vorah for the past few weeks. I’ve had a ton of success with her, but she absolutely has some serious issues, so here are my patch requests.
First, what problems need attention:
- It’s no secret that her punish game is non-existent, but I don’t think just boosting her damage is the right way to go. Thanks to her loops and frame traps, she can actually melt health bars pretty consistently, so I worry that an overall damage buff would be too much. She just needs maybe a tiny overall buff, and a major buff to her punishes and metered kombos.
- Her air time bomb bugs need attention. The long air recovery is fine, but the amount of time she spends stuck after landing is insane.
- Her db1 seems to be all but useless right now. The recovery is just so long and the payoff so little that the risk isn’t worth it, especially when you can just drop a Strepsiptera instead and go for better setups.
- Her recovery on whiff is pretty extreme. Combined with her bizarre hitboxes, she is at more risk throwing out normals than almost any other character.
- Her strepsiptera is inconsistent on hit. Other juggling moves, like Lao’s spin and Raiden’s orb, always pull the opponent into the same animation, regardless of the spacing when they were hit, allowing for consistent conversions.
- The priority of her normals is atrocious. If another character sneezes, their sneeze will beat her normals. You would think that wish such lackluster zoning, characters like Skarlet and Shang wouldn’t be able to steamroll her so easily in the neutral.
So here are my proposed fixes:
- Fix her punish game by allowing 12 to kombo into amplified db1. This would at least allow her to kombo as a punish. Amp db1 should also do maybe 4% more damage, allowing her to reach close to 25% 1-bar if she ends with standing 1 into a meterless setup. This would help her catch up to other characters damage-wise without affecting her loops or other pressure whatsoever.
- I think a long delay for air time bomb bug makes sense, but not once she lands. I think she should recover almost instantly upon landing. That’s assuming it’s meant to be used for defense and setups. It could be made into a more traditional zoning tool by keeping the recovery the same but increasing the damage to 6%. Though I’d rather have low damage, short recovery.
- I think if they reduce the recovery of db1 slightly, it will help her a lot. And maybe increase the hitbox width of amplified db1.
- Reducing the whiff recovery on some of her normals would go a log way towards reducing the unnecessary risks associated with her kit.
- On hit, when juggling, I think strepsiptera should allow the same consistent conversions as Lao spin and Raiden orb. I love strepsiptera and think it’s a very strong move, but the inconsistencies make it too easy to waste meter on a botched setup.
- I’m not sure what to do about the priority of her normals, I just know it isn’t right that she gets bulldozed by characters with so much stronger zoning. With its 20 startup frames, I almost think f2 should be a mid. I do think the 2nd hit of f22 should always connect if the first hit connects. As it is now, her viable range isn’t nearly as good as it seems since she needs to be in range of that 2nd hit, not the first hit. One idea, though this could be totally overkill, would be to remove the hurtboxes from her extra legs. So f22, j1, the 2nd hit of 12, b1, f4, and maybe even b4 wouldn’t have hurtboxes.
- Oh, and if the first bug in amplified bf1 hits, then the 2nd bug should hit consistently. I’m sick of opponents getting hit with the first bug but sometimes being able to block the 2nd for no apparent reason.
- With those changes, I think she would sit comfortably at upper mid tier, somewhere around Skarlet, Shang, Lao, and other not-totally-broken characters.
I agree with 95% of this. If you took the hurtbox off of j1, as much as I would love that, she'd probably cause some problems. Do you use nj1 in the corner? Specifically after a forward throw. It beats all wakeup u3's, all u2's except Kabals, forward rolls, basically everything but getting up and then anti airing her. Take that hurtbox away and I don't think there would be counter play. Just straight up hold this j1 in the corner after forward throw. Which I would definitely abuse if given the chance, but I think that's probably not the best decision.
I think a possible solution to the damage problem from her setups is to make s3 special cancellable. S3 has pretty much the same hit advantage (+40), only varying by 1 or 2 if you hit them really high up, no matter when it's used in a combo. With some decent cancel advantage on that, she'd be able to do longer combos into a proper setup more consistently, which is effectively a damage buff, and a normal that's rarely used would become a staple. Not sure if it would help midscreen though.
I'm always going to want s2 to be a mid. It'll probably never happen, but I think it should. It's just not fun when the answer to someone mashing d1 is that I have to mash d1 or throw back. It would be a good block string and lead to nothing more than that, outside of amp strep setups in the corner.
While some of the changes you've mentioned would effect the character as a whole, I don't think they address a lot Arachnophobia's issues. To see that variation playable, I'd like to see:
The last hit of f224 as a special mid. Meaning if they're blocking, it gets blocked, but they can neutral duck it to punish it. I think this was actually the intent, given how the KB's on parasite work, but because it gets ducked while blocking, that doesn't really work. Why else would you block that overhead late, especially when you can't stagger f22?
Faster startup on Widow's Kiss so that it can be more useful as an anti-zoning tool and preferably enough to use it as a combo ender.
Let's make these real.
I never found a way to make it an HTB like I wanted, but that's some restand pressure right there.
Deadly Swarm needs a full on overhaul to be good, imo. It simply costs too many resources as it stands now, and ironically you end up sacrificing damage to apply all the bugs at once with amp bf4 because the startup is changed and can only be linked from different combos that overall do less damage than if you'd gone for the reg bf4 ender. Either way, you end up with a choice between [starter] amp bf4 into a d1/throw mixup, then call back the bugs once you've got some hit advantage and distance, or you do a launch combo and have to wait forever for the chance to call back your bugs because you're out of offensive meter.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad design, but the sheer cost of it keeps it from being that useful. If there was a way to cash out meterlessly, that would be amazing. Either a meterless call back that does half damage or what I would prefer is that the bugs come back if you land a throw.
