This patch can be what makes or Breaks MKXL IMO.
NRS needs to be very careful on how they will handle things with this patch, but one cannot see their vision without being an integral member of the crew.
However, optimism is something that is not lacking.
For starters, the time the update is taking or will take to come out since the last patch it could be a bunch of things
Optimistic options:
a) NRS will probably reduce the ammount of 50-50s in game
b) NRS will adress the general defense mechanics to people can defend better against advancing strings like backdashes, more startups on jump normals, all j2 more dificult to autoface, the juggle difference of standing vs crouch will be fixed. And every single jump attack to be -3
c) DLC characters will probably be less of a 50-50 and more neutral based
d) NRS will do all above, while making some minor adjustments to underused characters and some minor fixes to Alien.
Paulo's Vision:
a) Alien will be Murdered, one KP3 DLC will be ass, one will be stupid broken
b) More 50-50's DLC characters will replace the current ones
c) Hat Trick will be ignored again, along with other underused variations.
A viable character is a character that feels comfortable while playing, can have difficulties here and there, but overall doesn't feel helpless most of the time, it doesn't need to win everything easy, but everything shouldn't be surprisingly hard as well.
A well rounded viable character in MKXL in my honest opinion is Ninjutsu Scorpion, his play field is midscreen, his disjointed hitboxes launchers are extremely negative, has a so, so walkspeed, having no armor is a good trade off as a weakness, he isn't stupid super good, but he isn't horrible either, there is always a room for improvement with him if you grind MUs well enough and learn from it. From a competitive stand point, i don't think with the current changes Scorpion Ninjutsu shouldn't ever be touched again, the only thing that could improve for him for better results in tournaments, is a slightly better walkback speed and a good backdash, nothing else, and nothing more.
That is how every underused variation should feel.
An example of a unviable character IMO, is how i see Hat Trick, has no way to maintain a sort of reliable pressure to maintain neutral, his only defensive option is armored launcher which is super punishable when blocked, his walkspeed is horrible, input buffer window being too large messes up with his neutral, his backdash is just as bad, tools that should be reliable don't work as intended, whiff issues, slower in everything than most of the cast.
So since he is minus at everything else unless a meter is used and he is slower with full of moves that can be easily low profiled, the character is just as bad as almost not being able to press any button, the outcome after it happens its most of the time him having to block to face an ammount of different options every single time, so there is practically no area in competitive stand point where he can force other characters to respect his tools.
on top of that, Buzzsaw happens to have the same problem, since he is a setup variation with slow advancing projectiles, he strongly depends on 2 launchers to do good damage (44, and B321) and those 2 are respectively slow that any neutral tool existing in game, and can't be used outside of punishing tools.
Buzzsaw doesn't need his hats to do more damage, he needs is at least his ex BF2 to launch people when grounded as in the vanilla version, so he can actually spend a bar has hat trick does to get some reliable damage.
are things like these that NRS needs to analyze, the whole spectrum, nerfing a character for the sake of nerfim without knowing the possible outcome is just wrong.
But they're doing nice things with Injustice 2, this patch can be a solid proof that either NRS will just put stuff in, or will actually take a good look on what needs changing and apply the correct changes.
I'm kinda divided now, they apply what they learn, but then the balancing decisions its what it seems to need some more polishing, hopefully they improve over time.
#FaithInNRSRestored.
