His Problems
1. He's very meter dependent but has no good way of building meter.
2. He has no game plan other than trying to land a 50/50, which is bad because his normal overhead is both reactable and unsafe. Plus it's just boring and is too reliant on luck to succeed.
3. His EX hammer can be jumped over, back dashed, blocked and/or armored through easily on reaction after any of his strings on block.
4. (Edit*) He has no fast long range pokes for his play style.
1. I agree that he is meter dependent to maximize his tools and real meter building comes from block pressure or to an extent projectile spamming (and he doesn't have either). Last patch at least made him end his combos in a special so he got sliiiiiiightly more meter off combos, but he is still meter hungry. That said, he could live with it if he got the right tools to maximize his opportunities.
2. His game plan is not trying to land a 50/50. His game plan is to stay at the right distance from his opponent and punish the crap out of him either on block or for making a bad read or stepping into the wrong distance. There are better characters than him at this (some of them with an awesome array of other tools like S+++ tier Tempest Kung Lao), but this is his gameplan and basically the only way he has to land his big damage combos. His 50/50 is used when you work to create an advantage situation, not as a rushdown offensive mode tool.
Once he lands the first combo, always ending on a HKD is huge to keep momentum (you have the right amount of time for a jump in that they have to block, armor through or stay on the ground). If the opponent has no meter you destroy him, and if he has there are many ways to make him waste it (like a regular hammer inflicting 12% on many characters without an advancing armor wakeup for example, as armor still takes the damage).
3. His EX Hammer is more a launcher and combo extender. Only his (amazing) F4 makes it a block jail but it's ok that on block from other strings it can be evaded and this isn't the variation biggest problem. Not by a longshot.
4. I know this tends to happen when you start playing the variation, probably it happened to us all before we got experience with him, you see the cool weapons and you think "offensive mode activated!!!", but the truth is that Cryo is about keeping the distance and specially patience. You're NOT going to win a poke war with Cryo, you should try to step out of those situations, don't try to stay face-to-face and counterpoke, he's not designed for that. His D1 is worthless when D3 can do everything D1 does at the same speed and is a low, but even if D1 was a bit better, the character wouldn't change that much as he's not designed for that.
Solutions
1. Make the regular ice ball connect after b33 on all characters midscreen.
1/2. Give him a mid hitting projectile in the form of a throwable ice knife like the one he uses in his Cold Blooded string. It should have less recovery and faster start up than ice ball. This way he'll get a meter building tool and have another offensive ability than just rushdown 50/50s.
3. EX hammer should have 18 start up frames instead of 28. This will make it more useful as a mix up tool, a better counter poking tool, and it shouldn't be possible to be jumped over after any block string.
4. Extend the range of his d1 with an ice knife similar to Kitana's d1 change. Make it 7 frames instead of 9. (I edited out the hit advantage change, I didn't know pokes don't combo lol my bad.)
1. Honestly, while I agree B33 has to be addressed to be the same for everyone (as I think you can't properly balance a character if you don't know if he should have a meterless midscreen 50/50 or not), I don't give a crap about it connecting or not against the whole cast, as long as it is consistent. It would certainly help with Cryo's meter-hungry problems but still not the biggest problem and he can live with B33 not connecting on anyone.
2. He doesn't need a projectile, he is one of the best characters in terms of movement, probably the best non-teleporting one (and better than many teleporters), he can slide under projectiles and if he has meter he can eat projectiles, making him hard to zone out. In fact the only good thing a projectile might do for him would be to cancel Cold Blooded into it like Boneshaper Shinnokh to get a meterless 50/50 after a combo which would be GREAT (maybe too much?) but, the benefit would be in that vortex, not in the fact that he gets a projectile, he is very hard to zone out even without the clone as a barrier.
3. EX Hammer is 100% fine and not the problem of this variation at all. Probably the only thing that was right from the beginning.
4. As I said before, you're doing it wrong if you're going into pokes battles with Cryo. Even his uppercut is designed to be used at a distance with the long reach and safe from long reach but slow startup while other characters get 7f ones to be used as a reacting tool at close range.
Univeral Sub Zero Nerfs
Sub Zero only needs 2 nerfs in all his variations including Cryomancer.
1. Slightly nerf his J1 and J2 so they can be anti aired without the use of armor.
2. B2 should do 7% damage instead of 9% damage. He just does a bit too much damage off it in my opinion. Also, this way it will no longer be optimal to use in combos after a freeze instead of his regular launching strings.
1. Nope. His JIP are fine given the character toolset and all of them can be antiaired.
2. Nope, you destroy the character if you nerf the damage from B2. 242 has a 0.66 damage penalty on the final hit (0.5965 for the whole string) and the second hit already launches (which means an extra gravity penalty and reducing your available juggles), and it's 3 hits instead of 1 (meaning against airborne targets it's 3 gravity penalty hits instead of just 1). You don't want to take B2 away from Cryomancer.
Honestly, what Cryomancer needs is just some kind of trick to let him use his combos from a way that isn't punishing on perfect reads as right now he has a VERY hard time compared with the rest of the cast when he tries to land his combos (not to mention his playstyle underperforms online as reads are EXTRA hard).
IMO he needs:
- (Bug Fix) F122 to be fixed and place the opponent on a position where B2 won't randomly throw the opponent the other way (or either make B2 always throw forward) as right now the most damaging midscreen combo is not reliable because of this bug.
- Make the Air Hammer worth using. The last patch made it at least not a suicide move by making it safe, but it's still not worth using.
Air Hammer right now is composed by 2 hits:
-> An Overhead hit that is a RESTAND (you can test it in the corner with a launcher into JIP Air Hammer as the second hit won't connect, and you can also test it against Sorcerer Quan Chi, hitting him in the air while timing his armor spell so it takes place when the second hit connects and only the restand happens).
-> A Mid that knock-downs the opponent (making the whole thing NOT a restand because of this second hit).
What I think would make it worth using:
-> The second hit should have extended range (like MANY groundpounds in the game) and INSTEAD of knock down give high frame advantge so the move can be used as a restand for a 50/50. Probably make the whole thing a bit faster given how easy it's to uppercut it (or at least give hit priority/lower the position of the hammer hitbox as naked fists go through the hammer and hit Sub-Zero first).
-> Make an enhanced EX version with armor and the second hit launches the opponent.
- Finally maybe (he could live without it but it would make his life much easier) the often proposed NJP with a sword, given how Sub-Zero's NJP is one of the worst in the game and giving it long reach would be great combined with his D4 to keep opponents at the right distance, fearing both options.
With this changes what you get is:
- Cryo still follows the same rules, he needs to work hard on keeping the right distance and punishing opponents, if you put the sword on NJP it becomes a bit easier.
- Now you can surprise opponents trying to get into your range with an aerial assault. You get multiple options like using his JI1 or JI3 like always, but now you have a bigger threat on Air Hammer (which can be canceled mid-way to force a bad read and the extra ground pound range from the proposed buff would still make it hit) giving you a free 50/50 to get your combo into HKD and the momentum you need.
- Right now the single use Air Hammer has is as an instant cancel on the corner to break armor after the regular hammer HKD (can only be used in the corner, midscreen or against meterless opponents there are tons of better options) but this just knocks him down with no time to use another Air Hammer.
With the buffed version, you would break that armor in the corner and then get your free 50/50, so opponents must be VERY cautious about using their meter in the corner.
- The EX launching version would extend the combo possibilities and grant a juggling combo instead of a 50/50 in all those situations.
- Finally, the "Cold Blooded into EX Freeze" reset would be slightly more damaging.
This won't make Cryomancer an OP S+++ tier by a looooong shot, maybe he won't still see much play at tournaments, but still he will have a safe option to start assaults that opponents have to respect and his corner armor break has a bigger reward. He still needs to play his footsies and reads like a champ and will miss the clone, but now he gets some options to suddenly change the pace of the game after forcing the opponent to respect the distance.
