The Painwheel Thread: You Spin Me Right Round!

Classic Fighting Games Skullgirls
1

Super armor, flying, wearing a mask like Vega? What isn’t to like!

Plot from SRK:

Once a normal schoolgirl named Carol, Painwheel was kidnapped by Valentine and delivered to the Anti-Skullgirls Labs’ secretive Lab Zero. There she was implanted with the synthetic Buer Drive and Gae Bolga parasites and infused with experimental Skullgirl blood, transforming her into the monster she is today. Violent and unstable as a result of these experiments, as a precaution she’s mentally controlled by Lab Zero’s powerful psychic director, Brain Drain.

Gameplay:

Here’s what we know as of Seasons Beatings.

Not much, as there hasn’t been any gameplay footage of her. We know Painwheel can fly. Also, many of her moves have super armor, according to UltraDavid’s interview during the SB demonstration . That’s pretty crazy to me.

Here’s what the SRK website says about her gameplay:

Painwheel is sort of an “aerial dominance” character, and can fly using the Buer Drive blade in her back. Being full of rage, a lot of her normal attacks can be charged up, and damage she receives while charging them will be added to the attack when the button is released. Since she is in constant pain, she has a lot of brutal-looking moves, such as attacking with spikes that painfully erupt from her body or contorting herself in inhuman ways.

Speculation:

With super armor and the like, we can probably assume that she’ll be an up close, in-your-face character. The pinwheel could be used for ranged attacks, but that dash makes me think, again, up and in your face. But who knows; Skull Girls usually surprises. Super Armor usually also means another thing: slow start-ups to normals. Since SRK also notes that they’re charged up, we can also assume they’re going to hit hard.

So that’s it for now! Post any information you have on her that I don’t. And if you’re Mike Z. and want to post any teasers, you know you’re more than welcome to. =P

2

Other than the normals, nobody knows how flight works in Skullgirls yet. How will it play on a character that sounds like a slow heavy hitter?

3

I’m curious to see how many hits she can take for her armor. Also, since she has an install super (according to that old post in the old gd thread…), she might become a crazy assist character similar to gold hsein-ko in mvc3, except with crazy damage.

4

You know I always assumed that if she had an install super it would be a BANG BANG BANG BAAANGGG type of thing that increases speed and wouldn’t matter on an assist. That’s assuming any type of power up move works on an assist in this game.

What’s all that based on? Absolutely nothing.

5

I do wonder if she’s going to be slow. Everything seems to point that way. And when I say slow, I mean slow for a Skull Girls character. Unless she can move fast and her moves just come out slowly. I wonder.

Huh. You know, I haven’t really thought about her as an assist, to be honest. Because any move can be used as an assist in this game (almost), I really won’t be able to even feel anything out until the game releases concerning assists. Although it seems like Cerebella’s hair laureate seems pretty solid.

I, personally, am hoping she’ll have a Super that’s really feared to get hit by. Something with a strong threaten, since she’s supposed to be a pretty terrifying character.

6

I’m under the impression she’s supposed to be similar to Sentinel, so that suggests her flight mode is fairly safe and fast

7

Why do I have a feeling this character will be the first to get nerfed lol

8

Mike’s philosophy is start em out weak and buff them accordingly, so unless they fail to balance horribly (unlikely given their track record thus far) I don’t see any nerfing happening any time soon.

Cerebella’s the one who’s going to be nerfed first anyway! =P
I jest…

9

Well im a bit skeptical. Rarely do fighters initially have a perfect line-up of characters XD

10

Rarely do fighters get made by people who play them.

11

mikes philosophy is also to not change the game once its out. while i know that MvC2 is not considered the most balanced game in the world, look at how the tier lists have changed over time. Iceman used to be top dog now no one uses him at all! given how much freedom this game has, it will take a while for people to figure out what works and what doesnt work and the game will be constantly evolving for a long time. mike is a smart man to not mess with a game because people dont like this or that initially.

12

That is kind of false. The success of MvC, SF, Tekken etc is that they ARE made by people who play fighting games.

13

But remember, Painwheel has that damn hyper armor.
Her attacks wreck through other attacks, she will be OP unless she is slower than a snail (and considering the speed in skullgirls thats unlikely).
I just don’t see why Mike doesn’t give the characters varying health. It’s one of the simplest and most effective ways of balancing a game.

14

mike doesnt agree with you on the varying health thing, he thinks its a cop-out balance that doesnt really change much. making gameplay work is a much better balance than health changes. all health changes do is make it take longer to lose for really bad characters (see iron tager)

as far as painwheels armored moves. first off we dont know how they are going to work so we cannot state definitively that they will be OP or whatever. from what mike has said though, i would bet that they work something like thus: you hold down the attack button and absorb incoming attacks, when you let go of the button the attack goes out and does damage modified by how much you have taken while holding the button. IF this is true it gives painwheel a major weakness, grabs. if she is charging an attack you can get an untechable counter grab. i would also speculate that those moves will have rather long recovery so simply being smart with your attacks can also be an effective strategy.
there are a lot of things we dont know about the properties of the armor. i kind of doubt that it will be hyper armor like sentinels S in mvc3. i would be that there is either a number of hits that can knock her out of it or an amount of damage. (also your post makes me think that you might think that all of her stuff has hyper armor, which i highly doubt…)

either way, lets wait and see how the character actually works before we start crying OP.

15

Ah Painwheel, she was my planned main from the get go.

Her mechanics sound pretty awesome since I love playing Sentinel and Juggs, going to love eating though all the Peacocks.

16

I really don’t see how its a cop-out balance.
in MvC3, Wolverine isn’t a total pain in the ass because I can KO him fast once I get two good combos in.

17

Doesn’t that apply to every character in MvC3 though? Wolverine also has above average life.

18

I just did a quick calculation to find the actual average, turns out we are both wrong.

Wolverine sits perfectly on middle average life which is 949473.68421, or just 950,000.

19

Cool, thats nice to know dude!
But anyway if he had more health he’d be more of a hassle.

20

I don’t think people should care that much about the balance. We don’t have to worry about playing a completely broken game until the next one comes out a year later for 40 bucks, we’ll have patches if needed, just relax…