I think that’s too much man. With evidence gathering in the air and turnabout not lasting until he dies, he could get his Lv.3 really quick honestly. I’ve only messed around with Mr. Wright a bit, but these would be the buffs I would suggest:
Make qcb. (OTG Maya) faster. Make the startup faster, and the recovery faster.
Make turnabout mode last until he dies, or at least let it last 2.5x times more.
Let his overhead ( f:) chain into his :s: instead of wasting the OTG (and having to be in Investigation Mode).
Make his cr.:l: have more range. Give it an entire different animation if needed lol. Cr.:h: is meh for hitting low, has decent range, but the second hit (the hit with the range) takes too long to come out.
Make the second hit of qcf.:atk: stay active longer.
I said presenting evidence in the air (i.e shooting projectiles), not gathering it. Searching for evidence in the ground while airborne would be beyond stupid. And I don’t think it’s too much (especially in a game with EX Seismo, Spiral Swords and Lightning Loops). He’s still terrible in investigation mode, and needing 6 pieces of evidence rather than just 3 means you have to spend more time in investigation mode.
Phoenix Wright is just like the other Phoenix. He’s not going to be effective until he reaches his special mode, and that mode needs to be extremely powerful to justify basing your match strategy around achieving it. There are basically only two options for Wright as I see it. He can either get his assists back (making him worthwhile as invincible Break the Witness was game winning) or Turnabout needs to never end since his moveset in all forms is based on attrition and attrition does not work in any way if you have that kind of a time limit (including after using level 3 since the move is for most purposes really bad right now since exiting Turnabout might as well be killing Wright). Either of those are sufficient to make him fundamentally playable, and while I’d support other smaller buffs, those are the core of what he needs to work with his current design and I don’t think any real alternatives are possible. I don’t think wild buffs like a large health increase (which unlike on many other characters would actually matter a lot on Wright) or air evidence are necessary though if they were put in I certainly would be happy that a character I liked so much was the lucky winner of massive and unncessary buffs this time around.
I could say a lot to the opinions I hear suggesting Wright should be bad, but I’ll keep it brief. Wright is in the game and is a very complex, very unique, and very interesting character. He deserves to be balanced as much as any other character, and whether you like him or the workings of his moveset or not is not something that should be a factor.
To conclude with my absolute wishlist for Wright that I think would be fair:
-Either give him his invincible assists in Turnabout back OR give him unlimited Turnabout (including after level 3 hyper). Either one would work though which one is chosen would have a significant effect on how Wright plays. I’d assume that most people would prefer the latter.
-Document projectile should follow a predictable pattern of spawn locations. The current randomness makes this a really bad evidence piece, and since Wright is going to have to depend on whichever good evidence he gets, it really sucks whenever he pulls this one right now.
-The same evidence slot shouldn’t be able to produce bad evidence/meat twice in a row which would prevent long streaks of terrible luck that once in a while just sink Wright. Meat should be less common in general (the red life healing isn’t useful at all).
-Maya shield should extend a little bit higher which the animation even seems to suggest. This would help Wright in a few match-ups a lot.
-The ground version of Objection! in Trial needs to be significantly sped up to be a vaguely viable option. As it stands, it’s basically not a move save for a few very specific combo possibilities that tend to be pretty hard to get and most Turnabout entries must happen from the air which is the kind of limiting this character doesn’t need.
-The stun built by his various shouts (Hold It! mostly, Objection! in Turnabout) shouldn’t decay with time though it should reset fully on any opposing character switch. It’s overall way too hard to use this stun property strategically given that every version of this move builds different amounts of stun and the number of remaining hits depends on the time since your last hit anyway.
-The judge hyper should only switch Wright’s stance after Wright actually gets hit by the hammer. An early DHC or XFC should prevent the stance switch though a late DHC could still allow for it. The former would actually be strategically very significant for Wright as being able to use the judge to 2 meter safe DHC out after getting all your evidence would be really nice seeing as he hits a much larger area than Maya.
-A lot of Wright’s normals could really use small hitbox tweaks in his favor.
-This would be purely cosmetic, but trying to present a blank evidence slot in trial should result in Wright presenting his attorney’s badge (for no useful effect). Of course, if I were designing this game from the start I would have included this and included an achievement for having presented the attorney’s badge against every character in ranked, but sadly that is probably beyond the scope of a balance patch.
-cr.:h: hits low in Turnabout Mode.
-If it doesn’t already, make j.:h: hit OTG. I’m not sure if it does or not, but Phoenix Wright currently has no way of hitting OTG in Turnabout Mode outside of Hypers or Assists, which is stupid because he can in Investigation Mode.
-Remove damage buff from Turnabout Mode, and remove double Evidence Presenting. In return, Turnabout Mode lasts until he dies. This is also somewhat of a nerf, as it weakens his zoning and damage capabilities, but these are already fairly great in Turnabout Mode anyways, and keeping them for the rest of the match is arguably worth it.
-Do not remove Bad Evidence, but make it impossible to get until you’ve obtained 3 pieces of Good Evidence. This way you can decide between going straight to Turnabout Mode with less effective pieces of Evidence, or try again and get your favorite pieces of Evidence. You will risk having to deal with Bad Evidence after this point, though.
-Give all assists Hyper Armor in Turnabout Mode. Not fully invincible, they need to be at least damaged when hit. They will still be unstoppable, just more like a better Senpu Bu in Gold Armor.
-Increase health to 1300k. He is a defense attorney, after all, and it would still be fairly difficult to deal with beginning of round nonsense from characters like Wolverine who are much quicker than him and can still take off most of that health in one combo.
-Maybe replace one of his assists with Meat Evidence. This game has 3 meter-building assists, but no healing assists like Jill and Amingo had in MvC2. His assists are fairly good as is, though, and the Hyper Armor buff would make them very good, so this might not be the best idea.
I don’t agree with the massive health buffs at all honestly. It already doesn’t make sense that a giant robot has 900k health and an ordinary lawyer has 1 mil (well, the game is not supposed to make sense).
I think there should be like a worthy “goal” to get into turnabout. Honestly, if the invincible assist he had didn’t get removed, he would probably be on my main team honestly (PW/Zero/Dante). I feel there’s absolutely no reward for getting into turnabout mode (probably the only one: tag out, then you have XF3 turnabout for amazing chip). Turnabout should at least last A LOT more than it does. If they don’t change that, change cr.:h: (turnabout) to hit low, because I want to be complete bullshit during that time if it’s going to last so little.
Not an expert on the character, but he does “decent” damage, at least in Trial Mode and Turnabout Mode. I can do 650k with no assists in Trial, building 1 meter. Haven’t experimented with Turnabout much, but I know he can relaunch at least 2 times, then ending into cr.:h: > j.:h: > cr.:h: > :f::h: for guaranteed damage regardless of the previous HSD. In Turnabout there’s always the possibility your combo uses 3 Objection moves to dizzy the opponent, so that opens up even more damage. I think in one of his modes he has a Maya super loop, but it might required to be alone in the team (team super cancel?)?
Honestly I am asking for too much. But he has several matchups that are hopeless and I personally feel he has no good matchups.
One change I think would be fair for him is making his Violent Axe assist actually come out in front of the assist caller.
Characters like Ghost Rider, Dormammu, Trish, Swagneto, Storm Morrigan, etc can kill him and he really cant do absolute shit about it.
There IS one general change I want to make. And it is for… ADVANCING GUARD:
I feel when a person Advancing Guards a Physical Attack they should push the opponent away. But what about say, A zoner? Push Guard should be the guarder closing in on them while push guarding.
Other changes I would like is making EVERY assist in the game good, not neccessarily broken, but at least they should be looked at and you can say "you know, it’s only useable with X but at least its useable. There are some assists that are useless that I feel should be buffed.
Looking at characters like Spiderman who practically brings NOTHING as an assist.
Or assists that are simply placed poorly like Hsien-Ko’s gong which come out BEHIND the caller. Or not fast enough like Magneto’s Force Field. I think buffing assists is a way to make every character a bit better in the long run.
Buff Crossover Counters. Sacrificing a meter for a CC that tends to be situational should be rewarded.
Nerf TACs with severe damage scaling if you are going for an easy mode combo you shouldnt get that crazy damage. If a TAC is broken by the opponent and they can OTG you should get your ass punished.
Haggar is terrible, he needs ways to get in. He essentially has unwinnable matchups against Mags, Taskmaster, Hawkeye and Dormammu.
This would accomplish nothing, by the time TAC combos are started, they’re usually close to maximimum scaling for the character anyway. You could make the minimum scaling like 5% for everyone doing TAC’s, but the biggest problem is that HSD does not apply. That’s what they need to fix if they don’t want to get rid of them.
The health buffs are mainly a joke, but at this point the character feels like one as well. It makes sense that Sentinel only has 900k, look at how quickly they die in the comics. Hell, in Last Stand Wolverine decapitates one in a single slash. So really, Sentinel’s health shouldn’t have been high in the first place. He’s definitely more mobile than most other Heavies, anyways.
Turnabout Mode is definitely a goal, and it’s so damned hard to get to, the reward isn’t even worth it. I agree pretty much completely with your second paragraph. Phoenix Wright would be a great XF3 anchor if your opponent didn’t have X-Factor, because that chip damage can kill high health characters in a matter of seconds. Plus that humongous j.:h: beats out so many moves and has loads of range, in addition to ground bouncing and letting you get a decent combo afterwards, so he can deal with incoming mix-ups better than Vergil for example. Permanent Turnabout would be a fair trade-off for no Evidence into Evidence and no damage boost. He still does ludicrous damage in Turnabout Mode anyways, and I do personally feel Trial Mode is fairly underrated, it’s just Investigation is such a crutch. It’s far worse than level 1 Frank could ever be, and it’s not fair that Frank gets to keep his power-up which is still very good.
Phoenix Wright’s damage is decent in Trial Mode, and terrible in Investigation Mode. But he has such bad mobility that it feels like he was meant to be a high-damage character and isn’t. Really, if Investigation Mode didn’t exist, it’d be shocking how much better he would be
Fuse Investigation Mode and Trial Mode together, and make it so you can only discard Bad Evidence. Make Turnabout an optional power-up. That’s the only way I’d see it as fair for him not to have permanent Turnabout Mode once he gets it, with all of the nonsense he has to go through to get there. Just like change :qcb: to be Maya instead of Underhanded Paperwork, give him the better normals for each button between Investigation Mode and Trial Mode, and blam. Character is now mid-tier, bare minimum.
At least on Hulk it kinda make sense, both from a flavor and gameplay perspective.
On the rest of the cast… not so much.
I still think they should just eliminate movement at the start of the round. It makes spacing and neutral strategies crappier for a very stupid an unnecessary reason.
On Haggar and Pipe. It’s really all you see people do. It’s be patient, call an assist and hope it don’t get tagged, air pipe and raw Violent Axe L/M for frame adavantage.
As well as shaft a slow moving character before we even get started.
Bolded for emphasis. This would help out so many characters without either a good assist or beginning of round BS. Phoenix Wright, for example, would actually get a chance of getting out his shield and find Evidence, and use smart assists like Rising Fang, which goes pretty much right above the active shield and give him a free combo, or way more time to find more evidence. This change would actually help Phoenix Wright out so much. Many other characters would also benefit, I’d say. Even higher tiered character would benefit from this, I’ve heard many people say Dormammu gets mauled at the start of the match. Of course, Wolverine would definitely drop a fair bit. The only thing I would miss is flying around as M.O.D.O.K.
(OTG Maya) faster. Make the startup faster, and the recovery faster.
(OTG Maya) faster. Make the startup faster, and the recovery faster.
