If I was going to try to fight Captain Cold with that sort of approach I feel like Aquaman or Atrocitus would work better. I mean, I guess Ivy might do OK too but it seems like she’s in a spot where there are better and/or easier options.
In Ivy’s defense, she has, of all the tracking projectiles, the one with the best speed/block disadvantage ratio, so she can sort of machine gun them at some characters. Cold’s whole thing will be to block something like that then use reversal Trait to start charging, and against Atrocitus who’s excess of -32 on his blood puddle that means he gets it quick. Aquaman I would argue is still better because he’s so good at all ranges whereas Ivy has the one thing she does well and that’s it, but there is merit to that as a counterpick.
That’s fair. I would generally say that anyone with better projectiles whether they track or not than Captain Cold represents an issue for the character. If I’m playing Harley or Starfire I don’t really worry about running into Captain Cold and if I beat a Captain Cold with Scarecrow then I know that they aren’t very good with the character.
Right, it’s all about preventing Ice Grenade from entering the playing field. I’ve seen a lot of talk about how Scarecrow actually does really well, but I can’t imagine a scenario, even with his range, where he can beat Ice Puddle + Ice Block into loading Ice Grenade. Scarecrow moves slow anyways, so once the Grenade is out, I imagine he can barely move to stop him from looping it over and over again.
Anyone who’s been telling you that Scarecrow does really well against Captain Cold has been lying to you and isn’t your friend. His [Scarecrow] movement is too slow to stop Cold from charging trait and definitely too slow to contest him from re-charging once the snow globe is out. Teleport is in no way, shape or form an answer for any of that either. There are definitely characters that Scarecrow blows up cough Sub-Zero cough but Captain Cold is not one of those characters.
Yeah, the discourse is pretty bad, I disagree with none of this. I think Scarecrow is decently strong, but the idea that he’s this super dominant character with only a few bad matchups is not something I’m too keen on. His pressure is extremely good but I think his approach is still too weak to consider him incredibly strong in the game.
Black Manta looks pretty cool. My chief concern for him is whether or not his d1 will combo into any of his launching specials, or if he can make a good blockstring from those. I also wonder if, like Hawkgirl, he will be able to make unique linking combos from his flight trait.
In theory, get in and do Scarecrow things is viable against any character. In practice there are more than a few characters who are really good at sabotaging that plan at the ‘get in’ phase with most of those characters building sufficient meter to then undermine the ‘do Scarecrow things’ part of the plan if he does get in with pushblock or MB roll (see also: shot, Dead). To me it’s actually a bit weird how in MB roll, a mechanic ostensibly added to evade zoning, has become a fairly integral tool of improved zoners.
If he’s like Hawkgirl I don’t think we’ll have to worry if his D1 combos into anything useful or what his blockstrings are because his mixup game will be too shit to matter.
Yeah, I would want to roll out of the corner against Scarecrow too. I do think the best part of him is his d1, it has to be the very best in the game.
Well, Hawkgirl is interesting. Not a great character, but definitely okay enough to do well if she could avoid a really bad matchup. In fact, PPJ got top 8 at Evo using solely Hawkgirl, and I think it wasn’t necessarily just matchup inexperience, but how good a few of her moves were. Now it looks like Manta’s grounded game is already way better than Hawkgirl’s, but I don’t think her not having a way to open up was necessarily her worst trait.
I would actually recommend pushblocking Fear-ferno. I also agree that his D1 is quit good as it’s fast and cancels into every special he has. I might, despite the fact that it’s slower, put Bane’s D1 up there as well as that move reaches way further than you think.
I feel like the startup of his trait is what’s really going to make or break BM. If he has an air normal in the 5-7f startup range with a decent hitbox and his trait starts up reasonably quickly I could see his pressure being of the bootleg tri-dash variety which would likely be quit good.
Bane’s is good, but I still have PTSD from the first game where it was insanely plus on block and he had a bunch of safe specials. He was the definition of derp.
D1 tier list would probably be like:
Scarecrow
Grodd
Supergirl
Robin
Atrocitus/Beetle in Scarab
My guess is even if it’s not the fastest startup, you will basically force people to guess missile or flight, both of which probably require a different reaction timing.
There’s a Bane tech video floating around where from almost any range he can hit you with his D1, walk forward a bit and frame trap into basically anything. He’s still pretty derp. Not so derp that I’m going to lose to the YOLO-ist of YOLO Banes of which I ran into 2 today. The secret to fighting YOLO Banes is to let them fuck themselves because they cannot for the life of them manage Venom cooldown properly. insert themoreyouknow.jpeg
You D1 tier list looks about right to me. Isn’t Braniac’s also pretty good?
I don’t know if you know true derp until you’ve faced the might of Venom Double Punch and safe MB Venom Uppercut.
Braniac is another one I put, especially since he has a secret version that goes super far and is low with the same speed.
Lately I’ve found Robin to be a complete mystery to me. On paper, there are a lot of flaws to be seen, but also quite a few strengths:
[list]
[] Probably the best set of pure AA moves in the game, with big damage on them to boot, even meterless.
[] A tremendous, safe sweep that is almost guaranteed to land a lot because he has a threatening overhead string.
[] Can almost guarantee oki for himself with a knockdown into birdarang, forcing delayed getup
[] Big damage convert off of almost anything, thanks to buff to f3
[] Hit-confirmable d12 string that is pretty safe on block
[] Not much risk; very safe on most things
[*] Pretty darn good wakeup move
[/list]
Like I said, to go with the good you gotta take the bad:
[list]
[] Horrible backwalk, but good forward walk. With average dashes, he will struggle to get around hard space control
[] Strange inconsistencies which can cause combo drops or awkward conversions
[] No real lows to threaten with, will have to use sweep quite a bit
[] Trait is not a real gamechanger, really can only add to damage or help him approach
[] Slower than average strings, which can open him up to faster characters
[] No way to force chip, so his pressure can be quite weak albeit safe
[*] Only one meterless launcher, so he unless he lands d2 with blue trait cancel or f21b2, he will not get much damage meterless
[/list]
Add to all this that Hayatei, with a few exceptions, is placing everywhere he goes with just solo Robin, and I wonder if he’s either better than we all think or people are just worse than I think. Really hard to say.
I played Bane in Injustice 1 so I was the person doing that to people. In Injustice 2 though the Peoples Elbow is a sorry replica for Double-Punch and too many Banes become enamored with Raging Charge.
I feel like Robin is, right now, excelling for a lot of the same reasons that S1 Ken excelled in SFV. Namely input delay and having different/weird blockstun on his stuff compared to everyone else. For example, I know that Assassin’s Strike is unsafe on block. The game is helpful in telling me this. Now, the number of Assassin Strikes that I’ve actually punished on block is a disappointingly low number. Until additional Robin players show up in some capacity I’m going to credit Hayatei for being good rather than him punching above his weight-class due to being carried by a strong character.
I do love UltraDavid referring to Raging Charge as “Fool’s Gold,” that’s an excellent summation of what it is
Surely it can’t be just that. Hayatei has been a consistent top player for almost two years now so I know he’s a fine player, but, as I often say when Sonic Fox will win or place really high with a wacky character, he can’t make up tools. There’s gotta be something to Robin, cause he’s beating people like Dragon even three months in. Obviously people will get better at blowing up his Sword Dance MB and Assassin’s Charge, but I wonder if there’s still more than meets the eye.
With Raging Charge you either go to level 3 venom or you eat MB B3 all day against anyone with a pulse. You do RC once or twice to see if the other guy knows what to do against it but once they’ve proven they can handle it you can’t just keep doing it. It’s really not a very good move.
By all accounts Robin isn’t very hard to play so the fact that there’s only one person putting in work with the character leads me to give more credit to the player than the character. Other than having pretty good range and safety there’s really nothing that stands out as being outstanding about Robin to me.
I will give it props for being annoying as shit to jump over sometimes. At least in this game it’s fairly punishable on block; IGAU it was pretty low negative with big pushback
I don’t think any character is really hard to play as far as doing what needs to be done, but we’ve seen it before where characters who don’t play at what the game favors take awhile to sort of flesh out. We saw this with Flash and DS and Lobo and other characters in IGAU, who had low representation despite being placed fairly high in most tier lists. This is more just Fuudo for thought than anything, I would not be shocked if Robin turned out to be pretty mediocre.
There are still some characters who have trouble doing much about it if they don’t have meter. Hell, even with meter it’s IMO sometimes worth it to go for the MD B3/F3 in order to bait the lvl. 3 Venom.
Whether I’m playing Scarecrow, Harley or Bane I don’t, as long as the ping is <50ms, feel especially threatened by Robin. Scarecrow out-spaces and out-damages Robin. Harley can zone him fairly easily. Bane can struggle a bit because Robin can put a lot of hits out quickly to negate armor but there’s a decent damage discrepancy between them.
I wonder if Manta will be available early Tuesday morning. Want to try him out before I go to work. I want to see how good the mixup between doing missiles and flight on block will be.
No idea. He seems interesting enough but not really my sort of character. I’m more curious how Hellboy is going to play and, based on rumors and innuendo pertaining to her inclusion in the game, how Enchantress is going to play.
I hope Hellboy has a stalling gun move. That’s my only hope. I’ll give credit to the crew at NRS, they are usually wizards at making characters who I would think would have no chance of being unique or cool into something neat, so bring on Enchantress.