*Pros & Cons from what I found in my month or so with the beta. Of course this could all change*
Pros:
- Great walk speed!
- Great d2 anti airs especially against corner air dash setups. Wake up d2 seemed to work great against most of those. Other times you gotta make the guess.
- No launcher wakeups have armor
- Meter build is almost too good. I'm unsure if this is a pro or a con at this point.
- Air tech (when it works) is a great option for a full combo, HOWEVER, I dont recommend doing it against characters in the corner who have float combos i.e. Supergirl/Blue Beetle, as they essentially can continue the combo free and reset their float count.
- Block stun: most blocked normals/specials have 0 block stun and you can punish almost immediately. Superman has probably the most block stun & pushback from his toolset.
- Blocking AIR specials/normals: It seemed that most times when punishing something in an air state (on the way down), the one being punished would ground themselves so that your punish did not get an unwanted juggle.
- Hit confirming is EASY thanks to the great sound effects! Definitely a game I'd recommend having headphones in tournament.
- Classic, but revamped, Injustice 1 menu music! Was a nice thing to hear honestly.
Cons:
- Push Block: I used a FEW times. I eventually stopped due to getting full combod for attempting it because you have to hold forward. Until there's a way to practice I left it alone.
- Supergirls trait, in my opinion, needs an adjustment. Everytime she uses a trait laser it uses about 20% of her trait meter but refills from that spot (80%~) so with lasers being plus on block, her having a low profiling d1, and the guessing game of her ice breath (easy hit confirm for full combo) it reminded me a lot of vanilla Tempest Lao pressure with Mileena low profiling properties. The guessing game is ice breath (no gap, hit confirmable, safe if MB'd/ combos if hits) & trait laser pressure (has an interruptable gap, + on block). You can take the risk to interrupt laser and get frozen, or respect the freeze and get trait lasered and shes plus all the while her trait laser is always refilling as she continues pressure and building more and more bar. My recommendation is to slowly deplete her trait once she uses it, when it empties start to refill it.
- Character select screen had a half second delay after the last patch (probably just something we don't need to worry about).
- Weird input buffers (after 1st or 2nd health bar, after clash) would make random backdashes or normals come out i.e. *Clash ends* you hold back = Backdash.
- Weird input buffers #2: Sometimes when being crossed up you'll get a backdash/forward dash when reacting to the correct side to block i.e. hold back against incoming crossover then switching your block to the other side quickly you'll sometimes see backdash come out before getting hit in recovery.
- MB roll had weird invulnerable properties. I never fully trusted to use it unless I was desperate but sometimes only dash would come out. Never figured out what caused this.
- No mute option (at least in beta version). Trust me, 90% of the people who got the beta rage and they'll let you know you're garbage when you win.
Since I stuck with Blue Beetle through the entirety of his release I'll add a few notes for him as well since I feel he's the weakest out of the 6 cast members in the beta:
- Most normals very slow startup to compete with negative frames of the opponent
- f2(3) seems to be designed to whiff punish but is incredibly slow, and highly PUNISHABLE on block, moves his hurtbox forward, and gets caught by air normals VERY easy.
- B1 restand doesnt guarantee any of his normals and can be mashed out of very easy. B1<plasma sends him too far away with push back to make any normal connect.
- Most normals, aside from standing 3 and 111, are either too slow, no range, or highly punishable on block/whiff to be effective in the neutral. You have to play very precise or you're going to eat huge damage.
- Float recovery is reactable/ very easy to punish during recovery by any of the other cast members. Supergirl/Superman recover incredibly quick from their floats that are quicker and more ambiguous.
- Avoids Superman full screen lasers well with full screen float shenanigans but doesnt have a great answer for stopping any of it necessarily.
- Shield bash is a great (safe-ish on block) tool to use to challenge the opponents execution and block pressure. It's certain death on whiff.
- Damage is not great at all. Probably the worst damage in the beta, but 111<bbMB/ffMB combo starter deals excellent 50%+ damage (2 bars) & 111<df1MB<111bf3 was a good 34-35% for a bar midscreen
- Corner damage is his best but ha to respect a LOT if the opponent gets knocked down as he has no real dirt to deal with on oki. It's mostly gimmicks.
- Great projectile
- 13<float cancel<crossover was a good gimmick but 13<float on block can be mashed out of on reaction.
I had fun with Beetle, and he's the closest to my playstyle as I could find, but he had his problems. I'm sure they're working on these chars and this may have been an incredibly old build of the newer chars released. Overall the game played and felt FANTASTIC. The beta was more for them to fix things on the backend, but I had tons of fun playing despite not getting as much info as I'd have liked MU and gameplay wise.
