So I took Manta online (New DLC’s is one of the only times I foray into online) and these are some of my takes. These are all subject to change and purely based on what seemed to be working against (largely) Wi-Fi players who weren’t very good:
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[] That F2 string of his is pure derp, got to be one of the strongest in the game. It’s slow, but it goes so far, is impossible to jump, and is safe and gapless and ends with an overhead so you can occasionally sneak in a missile to try and catch them stand blocking. Great, great move
[] His 21 string is 4 hits combined, and if done off, say, a j2, builds a ton of meter. A simple string of j2, 21 xx eye laser will probably build at least 75% of a bar, and then meter burning the laser to be safe will be almost a wash. Strong chip and pressure off of that string
[] His AA is very good, 8 frames and hits straight up
[] Damage is not very good. Spending a bar rarely gets that much more damage then if you had gone meterless. Bounce cancels and BGB will probably be needed to break damage limits
[] I initially believed him having so many highs and relatively slow mids was a huge negative, but then I remembered his trait. Obviously, these are callouts, but doing strings into trait j2 will beat most people trying to d1 after strings, which can lead to massive damage if you do j2 xx air missile.
[] Missile is a tremendous move in basic footsies. Covers a decent amount of space and follows the opponent if they dash in your grill. The air one actually allows a link after, so sometimes doing a TK Missile for oki can give you an opportunity for a combo
[*] Very safe, very few of his strings leave him open for anything worse than like -5 or -6
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I wonder if his damage will be a big issue, but I think his control of the mid range is very solid with the moves he has. We’ll obviously have to see how he might handle zoning on the likes of DS or Doctor Fate, but having a slow but meaningful teleport and his air Harpoon as callout moves will probably help significantly.
If he builds decent meter then bounce cancels tend to solve most characters damage issues. I’ve posted this a ton of other players but IMO the hierarchy of character quality goes something like this:
Tools (normal moves, special moves and mobility) > The characters favorite snack > Damage > The color of the characters eyes > Whether the character rents or owns their domicile > Health/Stun
Mostly, unless it’s a huge outlier one way or another (either way high or way low) it shouldn’t matter how much damage a character does. The amount that the TYM crowd harps on damage constantly cough Black Adam cough is one of the things that annoys me about that site. Here, it seems like Black Manta’s tools more or less get the job done and that his damage is adequate.
Well, I think damage is important if you’re a character like Manta, who will probably be a footsies god but isn’t tricky, and his damage is low when he does get a hit. CW is another character who is pretty linear, but when she gets a hit she does a ton of life. Another character who only does average damage midscreen is Superman, but he has the lasers, which can get him tons of damage over time. Manta lacks a fullscreen presence like that.
I agree that it’s not a deal breaker (I still think Starfire is pretty good, despite having very meh damage now), but context is important too.
I didn’t want to make assumptions about a characters living accommodations.
I feel like I’ve already seen a decent number of legit-ish situations/setups where Black Manta racks up the chip damage with the quickness.
Well, my haven’t practiced with the character since she got nerfed Starfire was at least good enough to beat a really salty (he sigh had a microphone so I could tell) Captain Cold. The sad part is that he counter-picked me with CC after I mopped his Dr. Fate with Scarecrow. -_-
Oh yeah, I think her zoning on characters like him that struggle against it is still very brutal. All that still adds up really quickly, but now since she doesn’t get d1 xx Star Orb anymore as a combo starter, she gets less opportunities to get really big damage. Even her F3 starter has taken a big hit. She’s doing a little bit better damage than, say, Deadshot, but I am not sure her moves are quite as brutally effective.
Yeah, there’s not much of an excuse to get opened up by her. Sure, her 23 string is one of the easiest confirms in the game but S2 doesn’t have much range and isn’t super fast so getting hit by that is kind of on you. The CC player in question though was, for some reason, more than happy to sit there and eat far Stardust shots like a champ.
Well, I may have finally found a pretty decent use for Manta’s floating on block. If you do his b2 low, the blockstun on a cancel is massive and allows you to do j3 and really only be interrupted by incredibly fast advancing moves. J3 can then be cancelled into air missile then cancelled out of to land on the ground again, and from there Manta could go for a jump in or perhaps b1 or 123 pressure. The missile will chase jumps, forward dashes, and most advancing moves, so the only option really is to sit and crouch. You are far outside most d1 range (save maybe Bane) so Manta is back to where he wants to play.
If it hits, you can easily confirm to j3 xx air harpoon for a nice chunk of damage and a good oki scenario.
Can he get a second air normal out during the float if they block the J3?
Also, what, if anything, do you say to someone on a dodgy connection who sends you some variant of ‘ggs’ after they went for, by both matchup and connection quality, the most obvious of counter-picks? -_-
He can, but the j3 pushes out so he’d have to float in again to get the move to connect. Probably not worth it at that point.
I’d just take a photo of my middle finger, probably. Coincidentally, I got a message yesterday from a dude who said I was good, but just wished I “played fair” and let people “get up and fight instead of cheaply going after them.” This guy had a ton of points and his profile level was like at least 70, so I assume he’s played a fair bunch, but my God lol. When you don’t play online as much, you forget about the ragemail.
Hmmm…seems like multi-float stuff is, so far, reserved for his higher damage meter-less corner combos and not so useful for pressure. Good to know.
Yeah, if the connection is such that walk and block is proving unreliable I don’t want your Ggs afterwards. I think the only comment I’ve gotten in a similar vein to how I played when playing a non-zoner was in SFV when someone ragequit on me and claimed in response to me calling him out on that that I played too lame and that it was boring to play me. I mean, I guess it would be easier for him if I was playing like a suicidal retard but I’m more of a have life lead will sit on it type of person. In my case the person doing this is one of the higher ranked Cammy players on PSN in North America.
Yeah online is a trip. My new least favorite thing is people going back to character select every round of ranked. Like Jesus dude, you’re going to lose anyways, stop cycling characters lol
That’s definitely annoying. Especially if it seems like they were playing their main, said main is not a good matchup for whoever you’re using and they still got mopped.
ProTip: your not going to do any better against me with a character you’re less familiar with.
My most recent example of this was someone who started off with Dr. Fate (good vs. Scarecrow) against me, lost, switched to Sub-Zero (IMO one of Scarecrows easiest matchups), lost and then switched to Captain Cold and lost with each match being less competitive than the one that preceded it. -_-
So someone on TYM found out that Manta can actually get a better juggle off of his teleport, which means his average teleport damage rounds out to about 318, with his f2 string confirming to 350. I’d say this puts his damage still low-ish, but it’s comparable to like Supergirl
For all the other stuff he can do that would probably be OK. Not really my kind of character. I do kind of wish that there were more Harley-ish characters; i.e. characters where every combo isn’t blahblah MB something, B3, Jump Somthing, blahblah xx special move. I also, inspired by and posted here because of TYMs dreadful ‘Buffs and Nerfs’ "discussion, only really want one change right now. Namely I would like for Scarecrows teleport to have the lowest input priority of all of his special moves rather than the highest.
Right now down, back, up, forward + 3 more often than not = teleport/death. I realize that this is largely a user issue but it’s still kind of dumb that a move that seems to exist solely to get you killed and fucks up your ability to neutral jump from crouch also takes priority over other moves to the point where many additional inputs will get ignored. If the game can possible interpret what you did as up, down it will and it’s very annoying. -_-
It can be generic, but it does help even the playing field. Not having access to something like that murdered characters in IGAU: Green Arrow couldn’t launch properly, neither could Ares or Cyborg and it was pretty brutal to them. Unless you had something else at least minorly good to offset it (Doomsday was still pretty okay despite lacking it, same with Grundy), then you were probably bad or at the very least just slightly above average. Bane and Deathstroke were standouts who couldn’t do it with specials but they were overwhelming enough to be pretty darn good without it.
Cyborg and Arrow are both back and now have moves that launch and they are able to steal decent damage from like a d1 or something. Helps tremendously to make them get a comeback going easier or take a solid life-lead.
I think that down + up thing can be traced back to IGAU, where down + up motions were literally almost impossible to do consistently for a little while due to a bug. They fixed it with the release of Zatanna, and the way they fixed it was to considerably loosen up the input window so it could be buffered easier. That is probably why you are still getting it.
Grundy’s combo path was more or less the same as the generic path I described above. The only difference is that he could do a bit more before the ‘MB Something’ than most characters and the ‘special move’ ender was always his trait grab. I guess he technically had to dash forward after MB Swamp Hands to land the B3 but, yeah, not really different.
Good to know. That said, here are, in order, the outcomes I’d prefer over an accidental Panic-Port (down, up):
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[] The move I actually want; usually dbf3
[] A move that would still, likely, work; db3
[] Nothing
[] Automatic loss of ~250 health
[] F3; why this would come out from the combination of d,b,u and f I don’t know
[] My controller catching fire in my hands forcing me to throw it to the ground to stomp out the fire
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Whenever I played Tyrant, he would always do Swamp Hands into j2 into b2, to reset, then chain grab. Had to have done like 50% or so, I never saw a b3 unless a background bounce was involved.
It could go either way. By the end of Injustice 1s normalization process Grundy was, hands down, the most damaging character in the game. My approach to playing the character was to get a life lead, get the chip damage reduction trait online and then just sit there D2-ing anything that came near me with the end goal being a timeout victory.
