Honeybee's videos were made before Sonic even played the sets. He's quoting stuff that doesn't make sense. Like he laughs at Sonic doing 13% off a back throw, but sonic was
comboing for 22% from throws in the set he played last night.
For what it's worth, one of my closest friends in the community is a well-known player who mains Reptile since Day 1 and disagrees with Honeybee. Sonic has found a Kameo choice that works for him and the reasons are straightforward. I wouldn't say everyone has to agree that it's the best Kameo for Reptile, but claiming Cyrax is unviable/useless just doesn't hold up.
So, your argument in favor of Honeybee being wrong about this pairing is that Reptile gets 22% throw combos instead of 13%?
Let's list, according to your previous post, what Cyrax brings to the table:
- Cyrax gives him an easy option for setups into invisibility
Scorpion does the exact same thing, but you get more damage while doing so. Sub-zero and Frost also do the same.
full combo off throw
A tricky one to pull off, and for 22%, but again, something Scorpion can do as well.
combo off slide
It adds very little damage at the end of it, so its usefulness is debatable.
plus some additional pressure on block for certain situations.
It will cost a full bar of meter and not regen for another 20 seconds. Not that the other previously mentioned stuff is anything great, though. Again, Stryker (and to some extent, Goro) do the same thing for much less resources.
Now, to Scorpion:
Allows him to combo midscreen from his tail swipe into easy 30%+
Adds overhead to any string - an experienced player will see it coming if you keep throwing it willy-nilly though, but it is a mix option. Add that to the threat of now comboing from tail swipe and it becomes a legit 50/50. Nevermijd a 50/50 you can do while
invisible.
Invisibility setups that grant lots of damage.
Armored retreat to fullscreen.
And Stryker:
Everything you do is now safe, so no gaps are getting exploited or flawless blocks to your ex dashes.
You have two mixes which are
plus on block for half a bar.
People cant jump at you and their wakeups are stuff if you have grenades available. Conversely, you can jump at will.
I don't know about your friend, but I'm pretty sure neither he nor anyone so far is scoring any top 8s with Reptile/Cyrax. At least not in R1ps arena, the Kolosseum and Destroyer's tournaments.
And to address your final point: again, the fact that Sonic made cyrax work with Reptile is simply a testment of his skill, not the kameo being a particularly good choice for Reptile. He would probably fare much better, for reasons I stated extensively in this post, with Scorpion or Stryker. Hell, I have little doubt he would make Darrius look good with Reptile - this doesn't mean Darrius is a good match, it is a merit of the player. It also doesn't mean Darrius is useless - something I never said Cyrax to be, so this is a strawman - as there is no such thing as a
useless kameo in this game, just some that are much better paired with certain base characters than others, that is my entire argument here.
