I dunno I think most of those ideas are too much of a nerf. You have to remember the character is 420k health in 2 parts. You have to keep her gdlk but not so gdlk that it’s just not worth trying. The fact that she dies in one hit or through any type of large chip should be her main faults. XF3 pretty much gets rid of that and the fact that Phoenix teams have absolutely zero reason to burn XF early pretty much sets up such broken strategies.
The main issue is that 20 seconds is WAYYY more than enough time for D.P. to kill off 3 characters. If they even did something as small as nerf her level 3 XF so she gets the same boosts but it only lasts 10 seconds…that alone would help a lot and wouldn’t kill off completely her use of the XF. Her boosts in XF just need to be toned to a point where there’s a legitimate reason to learn how to use and apply non XF D.Phoenix. Every other character has to be used both in and out of their XF so D.P. should also.
The effect in general will make it so you can continue playing a strategy of being aggressive against a 5 bar Phoenix. Mainly because they only have 10 seconds to be broke stupid and then afterwards have to rely on D.P’s regular attributes to survive. In general they made the game in a way so turtling for long periods isn’t encouraged but too many mechanics with Phoenix come together where you’re forced to turtle her instead of actively engage her.
The fact that Phoenix is two characters is what makes her unique and interesting. Making her into a one character with a certain health ratio just makes her a funny Magneto instead of something different.
It’s not the damage increase that’s the real problem to me, though. It’s the duration.
XF1 damage is still enough to kill a character (look at Wolverine or Sentinel for example), so boosting it to XF3 doesn’t do anything except eliminate the need to use super to kill. NOT saying that XF3 damage isn’t tarded-re, but the fact that it lasts 20 seconds is stupid. That’s a *fifth *of the entire match.
In my opinion, the best way to hand XF would be:
[LIST]
[]You have 3 healthy characters? No XFC.
[] You have 1 dead character or 2 characters in Danger? XF1.
[*]You have 2 dead characters or 3 characters in Danger? XF2
[/LIST]
And that should be ALL the comeback potential you need.
-Dark Phoenix can’t activate X-Factor
-Takes 50% chip damage (effectively the chip damage of a character with 840k health)
-All damage taken is red, so her healing field can be used to recover her entire life bar even if she’s been hit, provided she’s willing to risk playing rushdown
I would still give some kind of miniscule boost with 3 characters alive, or at the very least something, but other then that I totally agree with this and would love to see this adopted.
It’s fine to have a comeback factor, but you shouldn’t be rewarded a ‘get out of jail free card’ for being terrible.
Then XF1 (with all three characters healthy and alive) could just be an Alpha Counter/Vism. No extra damage, but instant cancel and speed boost. The other two levels would still be what I suggested.
Perfect. That’s along the lines of what I was thinking.
If they did that in conjunction with a lowering of XFC 2 and 3 by a level, I think a lot of people would be much happier.
It makes her unique but it doesn’t make her interesting. It leads to scrubby matches where players rely on her game breaking ability to win rather than on their entire team working together with each other. And this goes against the nature and spirit of the game.
I can’t see any way to balance Phoenix and make her fun to play, whomever that though it would be a good idea to include a scrubby, cheap glass canon character into this game deserves to be sacked.
I don’t agree with the first part. I find the whole “spirit of the game” thing to be kind of a meaningless statement. The spirit of the game is whatever the developers intended it to be. And Phoenix still relies upon the team mechanics; it’s just that she needs a team build *around *her rather than a team that works with her. (Although the latter is also possible.) No one (except maybe Clockwork) would use Phoenix if you had to pick her by herself, like a CVS1 Level 4 character.
I have my own reasons for now liking Phoenix’s design (Capcom seems to believe that low health is a balancing tool, which I do NOT agree with) but saying that she goes against the “nature and spirit” of the game doesn’t make any sense.
Scaling X-factor would be much, much more logical at this point. IE Equal characters remaining=Level 1, Opponent has one more character than oyu do=Level 2, Opponent has 2 more characters than you do= Level 3, and do not make it a one time check. If you pop level 3 X-factor, and kill a character, whatever duration you have remaining would continue to tick down, but the damage and speed bonuses would drop a level.
The argument that X-factor 1 is enough for Dark Phoenix to ToD is silly, since she can ToD any character in the game without X-factor as it is. It’s still bloody retarded she has a larger X-factor multiplier than Phoenix though.
I’d still rock Phoenix if she were in fact a solo team. A character I’ve always liked voiced by Jennifer Hale? not going to un-sell me on that without making her outright unplayably bad. And then I still might try anyway.
I think the issue is that it’s such an uphill battle to kill her. Let’s say you put on great pressure on their point character and land the snap-out to get Phoenix in. Then you manage to keep her from taking off and wasting time until she can tag out safely behind a slow fireball. Then you actually mix her up and kill her? Great, you did all that work for one character. Against anyone else, two mix-ups would have probably been two dead characters.
All that being said, if you try to play it straight up without the snap-in? If she ever hits even one combo with either of her 2 stooge characters, she is going to get 5 bars. Then it’s just random hypers dice rolling to see what happens from there.
The match can feel hopeless so many times. If you snap her in and fail to kill her. The first time you get combo’d you know they’ve got Dark Phoenix. When they’re sitting on 5 meters and you’re still not even through their second character and they’re just getting to play around for free. Once she has Dark Phoenix and is bodying characters one after another as they fall in.
I’m playing a team now specifically to answer her, but that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed or even favored to do so.
The number of characters that can actually run away from her for any extended period is a laughably small portion of the cast and even then it’s tricky given how good air throws are in this game. A while ago I mentioned that one of the dumber things about lvl. 3 X-Factor was that it tilted the risk-reward ratios so far in favor of the person using it that it deters the non-user from engaging his opponent until it has worn off. I see Dark Phoenix as largely the same thing. A poorly implemented comeback mechanic. It’s just that she’s much harder to avoid. I would also add that the killing her being a bad thing is IMO only a real game-breaking issue when you have a life lead over regular Phoenix and if you where to kill her, an action that would normally lead to victory, that you would instead be relinquishing that life lead to Dark Phoenix.
Any Phoenix player who actually knows how to play Phoenix won’t usually let you run away for 60 seconds. The best way to fight her if you plan the stalling tactic is actually to stall against her teammates on screen. They won’t burn as much meter so their damage is always going to be less threatening when they catch you.
I’ve said this before, but make every characters X-factor like Ammy’s X-factor… no speed increase, just a slight damage… Maybe even give the bottom 5-10 characters a small speed increase in x-factor
Agreed, though I would take it even further and completely remove any speed and damage increase. A free alpha counter/roman cancel into full combo that regenerates life and negates chip damage is still an extremely powerful tool.
I really like the speed boost though… speed boost with no damage boost is what I’d prefer. you can do crazy extended combos with x-factor and I think that’s more interesting than just doing the same combo you usually would have. I like the extra mix-up potential too.
I’ve noticed this, even great players will get Dark Phoenix and then bench her. Then in the last 20 seconds they realize they’re losing and bring her in, pop a level 1 or 2 XFactor and try and get it done. That part’s kinda funny.
I do agree that if you want the option to stall against Dark Phoenix, you almost need to start it from the beginning of the game rather than decide on it in the last 50 seconds. Also, isn’t it much easier to stall out against some characters than regular Phoenix?
There’s basically what people want Capcom to do and then just like what happened in SFIV there’s “realistically” what Capcom will do.
Capcom isn’t going to mess around with the XF much in how it works by design to change things up. Just like they did barely anything to change how ultras worked in SFIV when it was obvious that some ultras did too much damage. All they really did was tone down the damage off some ultras and then toned down other aspects of characters like Sagat and Ryu that were powerful when they had meter and ultra stocked.
With that the only things realistically Capcom is going to do to tone down XF is either specifically lessen the power/speed boost amongst characters when they are in XF or shorten the time level 2 and 3 XF. The way Dark Phoenix works they would definitely specifically have to retool her entire use of XF so she she can use it without having the ability to kill 3 characters just off the XF alone. Phoenix on your team giving your technically 4 characters is too big of an advantage + 20 seconds of level 3 XF. The fact that Dark Phoenix without XF basically never has to be utilized in a match is way too good of an advantage.
Stalling out Phoenix only works when the level of play isn’t that great between the players. Good Phoenix players will find you and hit you eventually. Pretty much any character with any mobility can run around and force her H fireballs to disappear as a stalling tactic but eventually you’ll run into a teleport with a fireball or 2 covering and then have to deal with her.