And those things will help her, but I really think she needs a real new move that isn’t a gimmick or something. This is my Morrigan wishlist; even if all of this came true, she wouldn’t be overpowered IMO:
Hypers reworked:
I would like for her to get Cryptic Needle, and for that to sort of be her “Bionic Arm” - fast startup, invincibility frames, causes a wall bounce that she can combo off of. I think Valkyrie Turn could be useful if, instead of flying to the other side of the screen, she just teleported there and drill kicked her opponent into oblivion. Then remove the invincibility frames from Shadow Servant, but boost its damage so it’s her mid-screen combo ender of choice, while Finishing Shower is for corner combos.
To summarize my idea:
Finishing Shower (qcf.AA): corner combo finisher.
Shadow Servant (dp.AA): mid-screen combo finisher.
Astral Vision (dd.AA): same, utility.
Darkness Illusion (qcb.AA): same, level 3 damage levels.
Valkyrie Turn (rdp.AA): usable in air, teleports behind opponent and does her thing, leads to a full combo at high damage scaling. Good for punishing things like a Magnetic Shockwave.
Cryptic Needle (b, f.AA): ground only, invincibility frames, causes a wall bounce that she can combo from in corners, but not mid-screen.
d.H command attack, “drill kick”, like in the Darkstalkers games; OTGs.
Comboable air throws (not just into a hyper, but full combos).
I’m not saying she needs all of this, just that this is what I feel Morrigan really could and should be, all while remaining true (truer, even) to her character.
I would be so fucking pissed if Shadow Servant lost any invincibility. That shit is seriously one of her absolute best options if you have any good DHC options available. More so than a straight up damage boost, it needs more possible hits so it works from farther away.
Astral Vision needs to have almost all of it’s recovery removed, and most of it’s start up.
Faster recovery/longer knock down time on air throw/Vector Drain
The ability to air dash cancel normals
And a damned teleport, even if it’s like Deadpool’s, and fails every 3rd use.
Those 4 things, especially, the first 3, are what I really want in addition to the dash changes.
Unless the PAX build had the massive AV speed up, no it had a few frames shaved to make it harder to full screen punish, but it was still complete;y unusable mid combo at Evo.
Cryptic Needle was bad. Like, really, really bad, There’s a reason it got used as her throw animation in MvC 1/2 instead of being an actual hyper. Valkyrie Turn is the same way, and your description is just a Hyper version of Berserker Slash. The only real use Valk Turn has ever had in a Capcom designed game was escaping unblockables in the corner. Also, the entire point of Shadow Servant is the invinicibility, and the “HA you pushed a button in my face!” speed. Allow holding a button to determine where it starts at on screen like Elemental Rage would vastly improve it’s combo finisher potential.
Being able to **air dash **cancel normals would let her user her flight mode much more like Magneto, Storm, Doom, and soon to be Iron Man, since you have unlimited air dashes in flight. It’s something you make use of mid combo, not during the neutral game.
Oh, I mostly just want it to be a safe DHC on par with Sougenmu and Devil Trigger.
Right, but I changed all of that in my descriptions. I understand their history, but that doesn’t relate to what they could be - both moves have a lot of potential.
Oh, I don’t want that at all - too much of those combos.
I don’t see how you could miss it unless you haven’t really looked at any of the PAX footage linked in this section. She can cancel her forward dashes into attacks much earlier (think ~5 frames before she can act instead of 15, notably faster) and the minimum height for her air dash looks to be “are your feet off the ground?”
As far being able to cancel normals into air dashes, that should simply be a universal feature for characters with both air dashes and flight mode. Morrigan is very, very limited to what she can do with her flight mode in combos because of the push back on air Soul Fist. It’s possible to do MMH xx Shadow Blade xx flight, MMH xx Soul Fist xx unfly, MMH xx Shadow Blade, but the push back (both the actual push back of the Soul Fist and Morrigan’s “bounce back” from firing it make it an incredibly tight link at that point. It just opens up a lot of potential to flight that isn’t there now.
Hard to tell from the range, but i think the projectile speed for Soul Fist S may have been increased since the SDCC/Evo build. The starts up is still atrocious though.
It would be interesting to mess with DHCing into Morrigan from a hyper that lets her land some of those fireballs. For example, Nemesis’ Rocket Launcher hyper causes a really high, really slow Ground Bounce. What if you DHCed into Astral Vision and sucked 2/3 of a bar from your opponent while calling Nemesis’s Wall Bounce assist after the DHC, and that gave you time to steal another 2/3 of a bar? I’m just using Nemesis as an example - I think that kind of setup will be really brutal.
Even though through canon Morrigan can teleport she don’t deserve on in this. It wouldn’t be true to her character. And when i say that i mean all the fighting games she been in before this. She never had a teleport. Why give her one now??
How would it not be true to her character when she is such a powerful demon in Canon? Characters evolve over time and Morrigan has an untapped potential for extra craziness. It should be taken advantage of.
When i said not true to her character i meant her moveset in all other fighting games. She never had a teleport. Giving her one now will just make her another Phoenix. Morrigan is a unique character. Why make her a worse version of someone else? There are other options to give morrigan that will keep her unique then a teleport.(Like giving morrigan back her Eternal Slumber)
Even if they gave her a teleport, she wouldn’t be a Phoenix clone. They still have plenty of things that set them apart from one another. The Versus series has always been known for “expanding” on a character’s potential, or in some cases reducing it - see Hsien-Ko.
I understand that they’ve already given her a new move in her meter draining Soul Fist, which I was originally excited for; but now I realize that I want something that is more substantial and less gimmicky. The change to her air dash height limit is a good start, and improving on Finishing Shower is huge. Despite those two additions however, her options are still pretty limited compared to many members of the cast. I really do feel that a 3-way teleport would give her just the right amount of oomph to make her into a serious contender. It’s just irritating to see her use an ability that appears to be a teleport in the opening cinematic when she’s fighting Iron Man and to not have it as part of her arsenal in game.