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Rambling about the state of Scorpion

What does that have to do with anything?
We just saw Shao place top 8 and he isn’t in anybody’s top anything.
What was the point of your comment lol
alright the one shao loyalist. you'll rarely see him just like how you'll rarely see scorpion
 

Matix218

Get over here!
Apparently, Scorpion players consider Searing Rage to be his better variation which makes no sense to me. I use Johnny so maybe it has something to do with the matchup. Almost everything in Searing Rage is safe and I'm able to punish all day. Along with his new high teleport, Scorpion players can't do shit against me.
Reborn is completely different though. Johnny has one of the best D4s in the game, but against Reborn it means nothing. I'm constantly getting whiff punished after cancelled teleports. If you do start reading them properly they'll resort to F3s Reborn is no joke.
Reborn is better for sure. I am a scorpion main and I dont agree with the people saying searing rage is better. A slight damage buff (SR) vs being much safer (reborn) is basically what you have to choose between. Safety is almost always better than big damage, and reborn does decent damage anyway.
 

Ozzy_K

Death waits for a slightest lapse in concentration
I don't know why doesn't anyone mention NA West tournament, where the player with nickname Phoenix played amazingly and got to the finals and reset the bracket using exclusively Scorpion (Reborn), only losing to Rewind with LK in the end.
 
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Skryba

Noob
Only thing I think scorpion could use, and would actually be fair for him to have, is F4,2,3 be safe (-5 or - 6, I'd say).

Everything else is fine and the character is very strong in my opinion.

  • He has amazing stagger pressure, F3 and 2,1 are incredible pressure tools;
  • he has some of the best screen control thanks to his spear and teleport, which coupled with F3, B1,4 and B2 and his walkspeed make him a footsies monster;
  • his air to air game, with J2's horizontal range and possibility to confirm the hit into enhanced TP for big damage;
  • the restand with enhanced spear into 2,1 as well as the oki options from spear ender give him very strong continuous offense and momentum;
  • and last but not least enhanced spear and the unbreakable damage he can get from it into 2,1,2 KB or FB are also very strong.
All in all, I think he's a really solid and fair character and he doesn't really need buffs or nerfs. I'd say his probably mid-high tier and he's fine that way, IMO.
 

GLoRToR

Positive Poster!
I love this character and care about him. Sue me. I'm pretty passionate about him lol.
I feel the same way about Jade but haters gonna hate.
Keep saying your piece, NRS might listen.

The big problem we're having here, both as Jade and Scorpion, is that there is this stigmatism surrounding the character where people who don't lab them think they are really strong. Then there's a fair amount of characters who also have their struggles and their players may feel that Scorpion is too strong.

But who are they balancing the roster to, in the end? Liu Erron and Geras or Shao Kotal and Kano?
 

M.D.

Spammer. Crouch walk hater.
Sooo..i find one thing kind of hilarious.

Let's take the most hated scenario, scorpion player walkbacking waiting for you to do a move so he can teleport. And the match is stalled, as a projectile or jump or normal from your side would mean insta teleport in full combo.

Ummm...not sure how to say this but ...this hasn't changed a bit. Teleport being a high still hits on all the above things, so they basically can do the exact same thing.

But people are happy that this doesn't happen any more??!?!? Wtf. It happens exactly the same.

The only thing that got actually nerfed is the 50-50 into doing a string or canceling the string in teleport or teleport cancel, so you can low poke in both cases now and be free of the mixup.

Yet nobody comments about this, everyone is going ape shit about turtling scorpion from full screen because teleport is a high. Doesn't make any sense,

You are still stuck fullscreen and can't press shit.
 

Skryba

Noob
Sooo..i find one thing kind of hilarious.

Let's take the most hated scenario, scorpion player walkbacking waiting for you to do a move so he can teleport. And the match is stalled, as a projectile or jump or normal from your side would mean insta teleport in full combo.

Ummm...not sure how to say this but ...this hasn't changed a bit. Teleport being a high still hits on all the above things, so they basically can do the exact same thing.

But people are happy that this doesn't happen any more??!?!? Wtf. It happens exactly the same.

The only thing that got actually nerfed is the 50-50 into doing a string or canceling the string in teleport or teleport cancel, so you can low poke in both cases now and be free of the mixup.

Yet nobody comments about this, everyone is going ape shit about turtling scorpion from full screen because teleport is a high. Doesn't make any sense,

You are still stuck fullscreen and can't press shit.
Yeah, the only really meaningful thing that changed for reborn is that some strings, which aren't a true blockstring into TP, no longer even pose a threat, so your opponent only needs to D3 and he'll effectively stop every offensive TP option you may have. And even that, I think is a somewhat fringe nerf, nothing really significant, IMO.

The change is more of a quality of life change than anything else, IMO. Makes it easier to stop people trying to randomly throw out TP and to bait and punish long range TP's without having to deal with the online mixup of enhanced or not.

D4's nerf is way more significant, but the move is still good at the proper ranges so it's fine.
 

Wigy

There it is...
Sooo..i find one thing kind of hilarious.

Let's take the most hated scenario, scorpion player walkbacking waiting for you to do a move so he can teleport. And the match is stalled, as a projectile or jump or normal from your side would mean insta teleport in full combo.

Ummm...not sure how to say this but ...this hasn't changed a bit. Teleport being a high still hits on all the above things, so they basically can do the exact same thing.

But people are happy that this doesn't happen any more??!?!? Wtf. It happens exactly the same.

The only thing that got actually nerfed is the 50-50 into doing a string or canceling the string in teleport or teleport cancel, so you can low poke in both cases now and be free of the mixup.

Yet nobody comments about this, everyone is going ape shit about turtling scorpion from full screen because teleport is a high. Doesn't make any sense,

You are still stuck fullscreen and can't press shit.
In fairness he has no reliable chip source. So if you land literally anything he has to come in.
 

Wigy

There it is...
Wut? Pressure sure that his chain twirling move is guaranteed chip kill and you can amp it and you can buff it.
You cannot throw that out in the neutral to get a life lead it's very risky.

I'm talking about if scoprion is trying to lame you out.

Before scorpions would spam chain nonstop and if you tried to challenge with any projectile he'd teleport.
 

Vslayer

Juiced Moose On The Loose
Lead Moderator
You cannot throw that out in the neutral to get a life lead it's very risky.

I'm talking about if scoprion is trying to lame you out.

Before scorpions would spam chain nonstop and if you tried to challenge with any projectile he'd teleport.
ahhhh okay okay.

Well now they do his D4 into chain -_-
 

Matix218

Get over here!
ahhhh okay okay.

Well now they do his D4 into chain -_-
If blocked in d4 range you should be able to punish chain on block. I play Reborn scorpion as my main and b2 punishes it and gives a full combo if you have a bar. If you have a fast reversal special or a fast advancing normal d4~chain spin should be a risky move for a SR scorp.
 

Vslayer

Juiced Moose On The Loose
Lead Moderator
If blocked in d4 range you should be able to punish chain on block. I play Reborn scorpion as my main and b2 punishes it and gives a full combo if you have a bar. If you have a fast reversal special or a fast advancing normal d4~chain spin should be a risky move for a SR scorp.
It is, I just mean like if you're not expecting it. Usually, after a blocked D4 you're gonna back up, but I play Cass so I mean I block a poke and I just hit F4. Not today, today I got chained lmao.
 
I really love what NRS did with him in this game, and I think aesthetically and GENERALLY gameplay wise, he's sick. I like the fact he's more of a samurai than a ninja in this game honestly.

However, competitively, I just think this character lacks a lot of things. I'm really tired of this NRS shit where we have top tiers who are super well rounded and have the best versions of everything, and than we have very narrowly defined characters like Scorpion, who I consider a pure footsie character more or less who are just not good enough at the one thing they do to feel satisfying to play or to feel competitively viable in a serious offline environment.

Basically, my problems with Scorpion are these.

1: Horrible abare (post pushback stationary button) footsies, which you need to have against all the top tiers. I just played a FT10 with Koisy, and you're basically constantly at the mercy of a character like Cetrion where ALL you can do is chip her down with D4's while she staggers you for days because your better buttons all just straight up whiff. He has this issue in a lot of MU's and it becomes super obnoxious. Scorpion's traditional whiff punishment is great, but it's pretty irrelevant in a game with fuck neutral wave dashing and the ability to give all your buttons a 25% range curve. He just doesn't get to do it very much. A lot of this characters footsie game against even slower characters like Kotal or Erron consists of throwing out yolo S4's buffered into tele when you smell the blood in the water of a f4 from either character.

2: Lack of mids. At the top level, everyone straight up says if you don't have a 9-11f mid you don't have any mids. I don't think he needs a super hit confirmable high damage mid, but B2 being safe and 10F would be nice at least. He needs SOME KIND of get off me option. On top of this, ALL of his mids carry degrees of risk. B1 is -16 if flawless blocked, it happens enough on accident and I'm now running into people who are getting the punish even on accident. F34, you're risking a flawless block gap for 3% if the second hit connects on the stagger, f32 is punishable no matter what, b2 is punishable no matter what unless it's Reborn. I fail to see where anything about this characters design warrants all these risky mids in the face of characters like Liu, Jacqui, Jax etc. This character's pressure comes from all highs, and that's really fucking obnoxious to work around. Not to mention that, if you're too far away to jail after a d1 or d3 on hit which happens often, you're more than likely getting flawless block punished on your mids. This issue has become all the more apparent since I started playing Nightwolf since he came out. Yeah, b34 is stubby, but it's still a 10f hit confirmable full combo mid that I can panic mash that makes opponents respect me. Scorpion just can't do this.

3: Inability to secure damage on breakaways. Scorpion not being able to D2 or fatal blow people out of teleport is really fucking obnoxious. I know some other characters have this issue with their launcher, and I think it's bullshit in those cases too. I feel like this should be a universal thing. Once again, nothing about Scorpion is strong enough to justify this deficiency compared to a lot of other characters.

I feel like, and this is just my take, if you make these super footsie/neutral intensive characters they definitely need to be getting better rewards off what they do. Honestly, I'd be happy with Scorpion if these things were done to him.

1: b141 was special cancelable
2: f423 was universally safe (-7)
3: Teleport launched higher so you can D2 and fatal blow people
4: B2 was 10f startup and safe if committed to. Low damage safe option, high damage high risk option except in Reborn in which case this being safe is irrelevant anyway.
5: EX Burning Spear to be a combo extender again
6: F34 to do like, 3% more damage on the KB. Everyone else gets more damage off footsie string KB's or do not much less with the benefit of the damage being unbreakable. As of right now IMO the only selling point of this KB is that you can always combo it into fatal blow no matter what. It just feels super niche in it's use.

I just feel like he's not a diverse character in a game full of characters who can do everything. I'd take all of this over even nerfing more things about him.

1: Spear is actually -66 point blank and scales accordingly to distance.
2: Reborn tele far cancel costs 2 defense bars

I'm definitely in favor of making his fuck neutral aspects even worse to make his actual footsie tools better and giving him more combo opportunities. That's kinda where I sit with this character.
This guy does the forfeit glitch and comes across as a psycho, further confirmed by long tym posts about scorp and people still take him seriously?
 

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
This is why I think reborn is better than SR. Gaining access to f3 and b2 hit confirms into backwards tele is very good imo. Both have very solid range for mids imo.
 

Matix218

Get over here!
It is, I just mean like if you're not expecting it. Usually, after a blocked D4 you're gonna back up, but I play Cass so I mean I block a poke and I just hit F4. Not today, today I got chained lmao.
I agree, poke canceled into anything (scorpion chain, dvorah ovipositors, baraka chop chop) can definitely catch you off guard
 

Matix218

Get over here!
This is why I think reborn is better than SR. Gaining access to f3 and b2 hit confirms into backwards tele is very good imo. Both have very solid range for mids imo.
At the highest execution level there is literally no argument for SR being better than Reborn. Even at my own average execution level I believe reborn is superior.