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Skarlet's Critical Core Issues and Suggestions to Fix Them

DarksydeDash

You know me as RisingShieldBro online.
Skarlet is a character with multiple zoning options paired with very long range normals. While this sounds good on paper, her normals lead to very low damage in addition to flawless-blockable gaps. What's more is out side of only one string or Fatal Blow, her damage severely suffers compared to the majority of the cast.

In this thread, I am going to discuss some potential changes to Skarlet's normals, custom moves, and overall game plan in order to help out everyone's favorite blood witch against her competition.

Strings & Normals
To begin, we need to address the overwhelming weaknesses of her strings. Each have a large amount of range but are either full of gaps, or are severely unsafe on block.

- B2 is a slow overhead that is full combo punishable on block, even when spaced correctly. The purpose of this move is to catch opponents neutral ducking or are conditioned to respect her sweep. This normal also has a KB that leads to, as M2Dave would put it, ABYSSMAL damage. I propose that this move is changed from -22 to approximately -12 so she is still combo punished for doing this up close, but entirely safe when spaced correctly. The KB off of this special move would also now have a bleed effect, adding an additional 10% D.O.T. damage.

- S3 is a 19 frame HIGH that has great range and knocks the opponent airborne. When this move is blocked, there is little pushback and Skarlet remains at -3. I propose this move keeps the opponent grounded so the opponent can not break away from the follow up attack. Additionally, this move would now have much more pushback on block, making it a solid spacing tool.

- B12 is a 19 frame mid with solid range at the cost of a flawless-blockable follow-up, and sends the opponent away on hit, and has a KB for landing a kounter hit or punish with it. I propose the first hit of the string is reduced to 11 frames of startup and the follow-up attack of 18 frames reduced to 13 frames to cover up the flawless blockable gap and give this string a new use to be used as an alternative punish for the opponent's unsafe normals, specials, or whiffed grabs. The Skarlet player would also be able to react on hit to cash out with the KB or not. For comparison, the following characters have this exact same option; Kitana, Cetrion, Liu Kang, Scorpion, Kung Lao, Cassie Cage, Baraka, Robocop, Nightwolf, Jacqui, Kollector, Kotal Kahn, etc.

- 124 is her fastest punish option but finishing the string leads to the opponent able to breakaway from the special move cancel, and the last hit of the string has a flawless blockable gap. The flawless blockable gap shall remain as she still has 44 which is +6 on block and has no gap, however, the final hit of 124 will no longer place the opponent in an airborne state, creating unbreakable damage opportunities for Skarlet. On block, should the Skarlet player finish the string, Skarlet will be at +6 frame advantage with pushback (much like 44), regardless of flawless block. This would require the opponent to only be able to think twice about breaking away as without defensive bar, as they can not punish 124 for having a flawless block gap.

- F2 and B3 are Skarlet's are main footsie tools that do not lead to full combos but can be extremely strong when the opponent is cornered. The only change I would give these normals is to properly jail into her Bloodshot as this is heavily affects matchups that she would otherwise be able to jail against.

Special Moves
Continuing onward, are Skarlet's strengths: her special moves. She has multiple zoning options but some of their slow travel speed and startup make them easy to avoid and flawless block. Additionally, the Skarlet player is not rewarded for landing these moves outside of blood tentacle, and has little to no reason to pick some of her custom special moves compared to some of her options. Here's some suggestions to fix that.

- Blood Ball is a slow traveling high projectile with massive hit advantage that lets Skarlet set up her offensive but is once again easily avoided and flawless blocked. This move's frame data shall remain the same, however, Skarlet can now follow-up this move on hit to either dash up for a combo, or choose to either recover health with Bloodshot, or send the opponent full screen with blood tentacle. Because of how powerful this change is, her amplified blood ball custom move, (currently two slots), will remain unchanged, and some damage scaling will be added to compensate.

- Blood Spatter (Bf3) is Skarlet's armor breaker but can also create create combo opportunity in the corner. This move shall remain mostly unchanged for the most part but upon breaking the opponent's armor, Skarlet will recover 7% health. Additionally, this move will also launch the opponent higher after breaking an opponent's armor allowing her to connect a Blood Tentacle or Boiling Point more consistently.

- Cell Siphon will bring the opponent much close to skarlet on hit and the hit advantage will be increaesed form +4 to +10. This change is warrant picking this move over her other custom options, as with the previously proposed changes, she would be able to safely fish for a counter hit KB using B12, or jail into her s1 at all times. After Conditioning the opponent, Skarlet could stagger s2 to further setup her offensive.

- Blood Ritual, the damage to Skarlet would be reduced from .5% to .3% and the longer this move is held, (max 3 seconds), Skarlet will no longer receive damage from Blood Ritual. Again, the purpose of this change is warrant usage of this special move compared to her other options. A simple scenario such as a blood tentacle knockdown could lead to the Skarlet player setting up a blood ball and performing the Blood Ritual to score an easy 6% D.O.T. damage at the cost of losing a small portion of their own health.

- Red Rain now has multiple versions to place the rain on Skarlet or on the opponent.

- Krimson Shield now prevents Skarlet from being Armor Broken by the opponent when she performs a breakaway. Most Armor breaks in the game have a KB attached to it and as we all know, KBs remove buff status effects. By choosing to use Krimson Shield, not only does Skarlet take less damage, but now she can safely breakaway when punished.

- Dagger Dance KB requirement now changed to "Triggers after parrying an opponent's wakeup attack." For those that do not know, a flawless block U2/U3 is registered as a wakeup attack so should the Skarlet Player parry a Flawless block attack from the opponent, she can now choose to trigger the KB, and thus make the opponent more afraid of flawless blocking.

- Retch-Rebution now has a KB that triggers if the opponent is standing in Red Rain. This KB causes a grounded stun state, (Similar to Sindel's Scream, or Johnny's Shades KB), that allows Skarlet to follow up with a combo.

- Red Mist can now be applied to the opponent, healing Skarlet by .3% when she makes contact against the opponent.

- Bloodport shall remain unchanged as with the proposed changes to Bloodball, Skarlet could now use this move for full-screen conversions.

- BloodShot Travel speed would be slightly increased to more consistently jail off of Skarlet's key normals of F2 and B3.

- Bloodtrail would have slightly reduced startup to allow Skarlet to duck enemy projectiles more often and allow the amplify version to connect at the end of combos in the corner more consistently.

- Lastly, is Skarlet's currently banned special move of Killer Clot. This move would be unbanned, however, performing this move will cost 3% of Skarlet's HP.


Conclusion
The following changes are meant to enhance Skarlet's strengths, while also increasing the viability and likelihood of choosing ALL of Skarlet's custom moves. A lot of Skarlet's core issues come from Skarlet's strings having multiple flawless gaps with maximum risk and little reward. Additionally, in her current state, the only way to somewhat cover these gaps is to equip her parry which is a risk in itself as it must be performed on a read, and again, the reward is miniscule for guessing right. Factoring in the many mobile special moves such as Sub Zero's Slide, Cetrion's teleport, Jacqui's Leap, and many more, her zoning was extremely easy to counter and punish in most scenarios, especially with flawless block thrown in the mix. I personally believe that every custom move should have its use, and every player's style should have place. If you wish to play a rushdown Skarlet, now you have more offensive options, and if you wish to play a more defensive Skarlet, you can do that too. Lastly, I wanted to make sure I maintain Skarlet's unique design of "give and take", where she heals off the damage she GIVES, but further enhancing the special moves that TAKE her HP away. A character having weaknesses is not a bad thing so long as they have options to cover said weakness via equip-able custom moves, or safer options at the cost of less reward, and that is what I kept in mind when proposing these changes. Thank you all for taking the time to read this very long thread, and always, I'm curious to know how you would help out Skarlet in the game!
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
That's a lot of changes, and while i like some of them, I think NRS wouldn't overhaul Skarlet with all these changes, so i think making key changes that can tackle multiple issues would be the ideal route.

Here is how i would fix Skarlet.


Skarlet main issue is she is a keep out character that can't keep ppl out effectively, and her midscreen damage is terrible from anything that is not 212, so she has to push characters to her ideal position to frustrate them into making mistakes, but sadly where skarlet lands a lot of hits to stay in the lead, most of the time, the opponent just needs Skarlet to make 1 miistake for them to keep up, so here is how NRS can fix some of these issues.

Normals Changes

1. Standing 1 antiair has horrible hitbox, however standing 4 has a much better one, give standing 1 float to standing 4, and give better recovery when standing 4 hits, this would let her AA with 4 and then start linking combos much easier.

2. B2, I like your B2 -12 change, this move should be a hard knockown, 20f startup, but i would change the KB requirement to be either activating on someone crouch block neutral duck, instead of two consecutive, and either DOT damage or NJP launch animation when that happens to give her a midscreen combo that can push her damage a little bit.

5. Standing 1 - reduce cancel window by 2 frames so parry~jab can work same way as B3 into parry works.

6. F2 back to 12f startup, like in the beta, adjust upward hitbox, because ppl jump through it.

7. B3,2 - New KB Anim on second hit (same has her back throw KB switching sides), but character bounds on the floor for midscreen combo in the end of the anim, the requirement should be B3 and a counter hit or punish.

8. B1, 2 Startup reduced from 19 to 15 frames, KB changed to be activated if combo count greater than 4 hits.

  1. F4, should be -3 on block instead of -6 on block.
  2. 1,2,4 last hit of the string should be delayable like Rain's B1, 4.

Specials Changes

Blood Clot - Unban but becomes two slots.
Blood Flow - Becomes one slot
Parry - Becomes base move.
BF2 - Jails off B3 and 4,4
BF3 amp - Launches characters vertical if armor breaks
Blood Ball - can link normals or specials on hit when combo count less than 3 hits.
Blood Ball - Recovers 4 frames faster, post use.
Blood trail - Increase startup of the ducking anim.
Blood Ritual - Transfer opponent's health to Skarlet instead of making her lose health.
Cell Siphon - Regular advantage to +10 ( I agree), gives 6% health instead of 4%
Blood Rain - Buff should have a timer to fade everytime she steps out of the rain, like a 5 second timeout run or should just make rain a much larger area while changing the proprieties of her blood specials to have buffed proprietes instead of buffed damage.
Wakeup U3 - Hit advantage changed to +14 on hit.



New move (Cost 3 slots) - Gives twin fumma Kodashi (her two ninja swords)
Replace current specials with MK9 specials (Dagger toss, Air Dagger Toss, Air low Dagger toss, Red Dash, up Slash, Down Dlash, Slide, and angled blood ball, and some of her old normals, B114 string, U3 in the command normals and her old 13f F4,3.

Why this could be a thing?
NRS created a round end taunting that shows Skarlet using one of her MK9 moves (the slide), and they did that to chang by giving him a whole slot for all ninjas, so would be a nice idea. This is only optional though.


I think the suggested changes, would not only fix but also make Skarlet a nice varied characters with options to explore, being able still push characters away, but having actual usable KBs that are not forced to throws, but solely with the goal of giving her good rewards on her weaker aspect of the game, which is forcing ppl to stand, so having good threat on launching KBs without damaging her main game of pushing ppl back would be fufilling.
 
I'm not going to make a list of changes because I know for a fact that they won't do anything big.

However I will say that her s3 is fine as it is. I say that because I never got punish for accidently throwing that out. When I want to do b3 I sometime end up doing s3 instead and I anti air them without reading it, which save my life on multiple occasions.

I lab s3 and the hit box is stupidity big. You catch people on the way up, at the peak and just when they are coming down from it. I suggest this is something Skarlet players can incorporate into their neutral not necessarily as an anti air because it's still a 19 frame move; but use to deter people from constantly jumping at you. If they hit by it in the air, cancel into bf2 for possible 7% health back.
 
I appreciate the work you've put into this, however I do not think Skarlet need THAT much tweaks. I think some of these changes idea are just too much yo be honest.

- B2 is a slow overhead that is full combo punishable on block, even when spaced correctly. The purpose of this move is to catch opponents neutral ducking or are conditioned to respect her sweep. This normal also has a KB that leads to, as M2Dave would put it, ABYSSMAL damage. I propose that this move is changed from -22 to approximately -12 so she is still combo punished for doing this up close, but entirely safe when spaced correctly. The KB off of this special move would also now have a bleed effect, adding an additional 10% D.O.T. damage.
I like this change,

- S3 is a 19 frame HIGH that has great range and knocks the opponent airborne. When this move is blocked, there is little pushback and Skarlet remains at -3. I propose this move keeps the opponent grounded so the opponent can not break away from the follow up attack. Additionally, this move would now have much more pushback on block, making it a solid spacing tool.
S3 is honestly fine as it is, and this change wouldn't do much so... Well why not

- Blood Ball is a slow traveling high projectile with massive hit advantage that lets Skarlet set up her offensive but is once again easily avoided and flawless blocked. This move's frame data shall remain the same, however, Skarlet can now follow-up this move on hit to either dash up for a combo, or choose to either recover health with Bloodshot, or send the opponent full screen with blood tentacle. Because of how powerful this change is, her amplified blood ball custom move, (currently two slots), will remain unchanged, and some damage scaling will be added to compensate.
Blood ball being a combo extender would be way too strong. I think the current blood ball is already one of her best move, no need to change it

- Blood Spatter (Bf3) is Skarlet's armor breaker but can also create create combo opportunity in the corner. This move shall remain mostly unchanged for the most part but upon breaking the opponent's armor, Skarlet will recover 7% health. Additionally, this move will also launch the opponent higher after breaking an opponent's armor allowing her to connect a Blood Tentacle or Boiling Point more consistently.
I agree that Blood splatter is bad as an armor breaker. It's almost impossible to combo out of a non amplified armor break in the corner. You can squeeze a d1 here and there in the corner right after a launcher (for exemple 212 bf3 armor break d1 12 bf3) but when we see how crazy some of the armor breaks are... Well it's far from being a good armor break (even if armor breakers are a dumb idea to begin with). However I don't know why Skarlet should heal on a succesful armor break, a combo with a non amplified armor break is already a good reward.

- Blood Ritual, the damage to Skarlet would be reduced from .5% to .3% and the longer this move is held, (max 3 seconds), Skarlet will no longer receive damage from Blood Ritual. Again, the purpose of this change is warrant usage of this special move compared to her other options. A simple scenario such as a blood tentacle knockdown could lead to the Skarlet player setting up a blood ball and performing the Blood Ritual to score an easy 6% D.O.T. damage at the cost of losing a small portion of their own health.
I like this change

- Krimson Shield now prevents Skarlet from being Armor Broken by the opponent when she performs a breakaway. Most Armor breaks in the game have a KB attached to it and as we all know, KBs remove buff status effects. By choosing to use Krimson Shield, not only does Skarlet take less damage, but now she can safely breakaway when punished.
I thought about this move and I think the best way to make it viable is to make it a bit similar to Kotal's defence totem, you can have 3 charges of shield that will disappear over time. However that would required a big frame change.

- Dagger Dance KB requirement now changed to "Triggers after parrying an opponent's wakeup attack." For those that do not know, a flawless block U2/U3 is registered as a wakeup attack so should the Skarlet Player parry a Flawless block attack from the opponent, she can now choose to trigger the KB, and thus make the opponent more afraid of flawless blocking.
I like the current requirement but why not. I always assumed they avoided to give the typical fb attack/wake up attack requirement because they thought it would happen too much.

- Red Mist can now be applied to the opponent, healing Skarlet by .3% when she makes contact against the opponent.
Why not.
My ideas to buff red mist were :
  • We can amplify Red mist to have the debuff to last longer, have 20 extra damage on hit and a 10 frame advantage on restand
  • Red mist becomes armor breaker and allows for a combo extender restand on armor break
 

DarksydeDash

You know me as RisingShieldBro online.
That's a lot of changes, and while i like some of them, I think NRS wouldn't overhaul Skarlet with all these changes, so i think making key changes that can tackle multiple issues would be the ideal route.

Here is how i would fix Skarlet.


Skarlet main issue is she is a keep out character that can't keep ppl out effectively, and her midscreen damage is terrible from anything that is not 212, so she has to push characters to her ideal position to frustrate them into making mistakes, but sadly where skarlet lands a lot of hits to stay in the lead, most of the time, the opponent just needs Skarlet to make 1 miistake for them to keep up, so here is how NRS can fix some of these issues.

Normals Changes

1. Standing 1 antiair has horrible hitbox, however standing 4 has a much better one, give standing 1 float to standing 4, and give better recovery when standing 4 hits, this would let her AA with 4 and then start linking combos much easier.

2. B2, I like your B2 -12 change, this move should be a hard knockown, 20f startup, but i would change the KB requirement to be either activating on someone crouch block neutral duck, instead of two consecutive, and either DOT damage or NJP launch animation when that happens to give her a midscreen combo that can push her damage a little bit.

5. Standing 1 - reduce cancel window by 2 frames so parry~jab can work same way as B3 into parry works.

6. F2 back to 12f startup, like in the beta, adjust upward hitbox, because ppl jump through it.

7. B3,2 - New KB Anim on second hit (same has her back throw KB switching sides), but character bounds on the floor for midscreen combo in the end of the anim, the requirement should be B3 and a counter hit or punish.

8. B1, 2 Startup reduced from 19 to 15 frames, KB changed to be activated if combo count greater than 4 hits.

  1. F4, should be -3 on block instead of -6 on block.
  2. 1,2,4 last hit of the string should be delayable like Rain's B1, 4.

Specials Changes

Blood Clot - Unban but becomes two slots.
Blood Flow - Becomes one slot
Parry - Becomes base move.
BF2 - Jails off B3 and 4,4
BF3 amp - Launches characters vertical if armor breaks
Blood Ball - can link normals or specials on hit when combo count less than 3 hits.
Blood Ball - Recovers 4 frames faster, post use.
Blood trail - Increase startup of the ducking anim.
Blood Ritual - Transfer opponent's health to Skarlet instead of making her lose health.
Cell Siphon - Regular advantage to +10 ( I agree), gives 6% health instead of 4%
Blood Rain - Buff should have a timer to fade everytime she steps out of the rain, like a 5 second timeout run or should just make rain a much larger area while changing the proprieties of her blood specials to have buffed proprietes instead of buffed damage.
Wakeup U3 - Hit advantage changed to +14 on hit.



New move (Cost 3 slots) - Gives twin fumma Kodashi (her two ninja swords)
Replace current specials with MK9 specials (Dagger toss, Air Dagger Toss, Air low Dagger toss, Red Dash, up Slash, Down Dlash, Slide, and angled blood ball, and some of her old normals, B114 string, U3 in the command normals and her old 13f F4,3.

Why this could be a thing?
NRS created a round end taunting that shows Skarlet using one of her MK9 moves (the slide), and they did that to chang by giving him a whole slot for all ninjas, so would be a nice idea. This is only optional though.


I think the suggested changes, would not only fix but also make Skarlet a nice varied characters with options to explore, being able still push characters away, but having actual usable KBs that are not forced to throws, but solely with the goal of giving her good rewards on her weaker aspect of the game, which is forcing ppl to stand, so having good threat on launching KBs without damaging her main game of pushing ppl back would be fufilling.
Noticed you omitted a lot of her custom moves. Do you think they're mostly fine as is?