Strategy - Sun God The problem with Sun God's charge system

Maybe the problem is that you're guessing?

But seriously if their punish is 35% and yours is 30 and you just ran a random scenario an infinite number of times you'd come out ahead even if the grab only did 7% damage with no benefits other than that.

Nothing wrong with the charges. The giving up positioning on how you get the charges is more important to me.

Isn't back 1 hit confirmable for sun god grab?

Thanks for the detailed info Qwark.

I will later post about blood offering being next to useless for this variation.

A good solution would be to make the damage bonus of blood offering give more damage exclusively to your command grabs the lesser/more sun charges you have, something like;

L1 BO 12%
L2 BO 20%
L3 BO 25%

The problem right now is that blood offering doesn't really do much outside of catching someone with a F2. Everything else receives a very slight damage bonus except his hard hitting combo starter in F2.

Command grab damage is

10% - 3% increase
16% - 5% increase
20% - 4% increase

As you can see, the damage gets noteworthy at after lvl 2 due to the scaling.

The metagame of blood offering in Sun God is that you desperately want your F2 to hit and your reward is 4-5% additional combo damage for every buffed F2. The problem with is being that any other moves do almost nothing because they don't have high base damage and the limit of your buff's duration is 3 hits, block or hit.

It all comes down to BO being very situational and granting small increases in damage unless you land a F2 which actually makes the 10% you sacrificed turn into damage dealt at the ratio of 1,2.

( BO ) F2 ( BO )F2 ( BO )F2 B12 Sun Choke L3 = 44% that's the damage of your 1 bar BNB for no bar at all
BO X3 F2 F2 F2 B12 EX AA B12 Sun Choke L3 = 55%, 11% more damage for one bar




This is the part when sun/god ray comes in. You always want to threaten with these, normal ray gives about 1,5% if your opponent comes running at you with you having to respect his normal, god ray gives 3% in the same time.

While that's good and all, you need time to set up blood offering and the rays. You no longer have the luxury of ray being done off of a knockdown because you must conserve your damage buff and are pretty much forced to either do a long recovering ray in neutral or not at all. In theory, it's very easy to say that you do blood offering and use the rays to recover your hp but in theory that is simply not practical. Are you going to use a potentially punishable beam with slow life gain or a slightly faster one with good life recovery at the cost of meter?

Assume you do get your ex ray out, you've spent a bar and how are you going to capitalise on damage? A tick throw wastes 2 buffed hits on a mixup for slightly more damage, other hits give you about 5% added damage on your regular bnb.

F2 is the only combo starter worth having with at least 2-3 hits left on BO. We've already discussed the meterless and metered damage of this unsafe move. EX Ray is 1 bar, your 55% bnb with all 3 hits, an unsafe launcher and 1 bar of meter 55%. You used 2 bars of meter and restricted your use of normals for 55% when Kotal gets 44 with simply one and no setup required at all. No gimmicky self-hurting buffs and needing to activate ray and hope the mindgame turns out in your favor.

The only way I use blood offering at this moment is with 3 bars left, fishing for armoured command grabs for 60% total as a total gimmick because anyone with a brain can see that I've forsaken his normals entirely.

Qwark,

You bring up some interesting points. From my experience blood offering only really benefits blood god, only because the damage stacks with crystal totem. But as you mentioned, blood offering scales poorly with sun good. I believe because it only counts as three hits, if blood offering affected the entire sun choke grapple. Then it might actually be good.

I agree with most of this. Overall, I'd be very happy with sun choke if it got a 3-4% damage buff on each level.

RYX said:

i think sun god would be better off as a grappler if he didn't have so many other abilities taking up his kit

overall Kotal feels heavily adjusted based on the inclusion of stuff like Sun Ray and Blood Offering that even though these abilities are subpar he's been toned down a fair amount for it, not to mention his scorch with the meter gain/health advantage (with the latter being somewhat disappointing at only 12%)

it'd be really easy to make him too good considering all the levers for balance he has right now, but i think a start would be reassessing his risk reward and possibly upping his grab's damage to make it more respectable.

It's also important to consider that even without levels in Choke he'll still outperform in raw combo damage compared to other grapplers. Kotal can go over 40% relatively easily as he gains charges, where people like Goro and Kano have a little more trouble. I think they made up for that by making the grab side of the equation a little less rewarding (at first) and then allowing him to sit on par with the other grabs.

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Lol this should be a buff thread @Qwark28. Sun God sucks ass, when the point of the entire variation is the command grab but the grab sucks.

I took him into the lab for half an hour and came to the same conclusions. This needs a buff to justify picking it over even Blood Jobber imo. I don't get why it just doesn't always do 16% (with better positioning on hit) and have the lvl system work the way it does.

Some people mentioned it, but I'm not sure you realise how gruesome it is until you get at the end of it.

It takes a real tournament nerve god to keep his sanity after getting put through 8-9 lvl 3 grab animations in the same match. 90% of the people will go insane foaming at the mouth and jump and play very bad just so they don't get grabbed again. Once you break their spirit with this, it's an easy win.

Top this with d1-grab being almost unescapable on block and you got yourself the most annoying char in the game.

I think it's abundantly clear to anyone who has made an honest attempt to play sun god seriously that his command grab damage is prohibitively low.

I mean, I'll just compare him to unstoppable Jason, since I main him as well. Jason's two command grabs do 13% and 14%, unmetered and 18% and 19% with a bar. Sure, kotal easily gets more raw combo damage than Jason, but It is easier to connect with individual command grabs and/or tick throws than it is to land full BNBs. So, I would argue that Jason "hits harder" more frequently. Also, Jason has tick throws that connect on BOTH hit and block. Finally, Jason's healing buff kills sun god's sun scorch and Jason's damage buff kills blood offering.

I just think that a more damaging sun choke would really help sun god level up with respect to other grapplers in the cast.

M.D. said:

Some people mentioned it, but I'm not sure you realise how gruesome it is until you get at the end of it.

It takes a real tournament nerve god to keep his sanity after getting put through 8-9 lvl 3 grab animations in the same match. 90% of the people will go insane foaming at the mouth and jump and play very bad just so they don't get grabbed again. Once you break their spirit with this, it's an easy win.

Top this with d1-grab being almost unescapable on block and you got yourself the most annoying char in the game.

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Only a bad or broken player would get hit by so many command throws.

Any one person can get in your head with good reads, the problem is that the reads are very risky and very improbable.

Kotal's grab is slow, death on whiff andn ot damaging. The mixup is never in your favor which is ironic as you're supposed to be the aggressor.

Command grabs are there to threaten loss, not annoyance.

KeyserSoze said:

I think it's abundantly clear to anyone who has made an honest attempt to play sun god seriously that his command grab damage is prohibitively low.

I mean, I'll just compare him to unstoppable Jason, since I main him as well. Jason's two command grabs do 13% and 14%, unmetered and 18% and 19% with a bar. Sure, kotal easily gets more raw combo damage than Jason, but It is easier to connect with individual command grabs and/or tick throws than it is to land full BNBs. So, I would argue that Jason "hits harder" more frequently. Also, Jason has tick throws that connect on BOTH hit and block. Finally, Jason's healing buff kills sun god's sun scorch and Jason's damage buff kills blood offering.

I just think that a more damaging sun choke would really help sun god level up with respect to other grapplers in the cast.

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Jason also has 8f recovery on his command grab. Which is absolutely ridiculous.

Now I understand that I may not be the most knowledgeable of this character but I do believe I have a good understanding of this character. I don't believe the command grab system is as flawed as many believe. When you look at it alone it doesn't appear the most obvious but looking at his tools altogether I think it does. Here is my reasoning: Lv1 is 7%, lv2 is 11% which would be considered high damage pokes, as well as giving safe jumps. Considering the number of situations he can use command grab there should be some form of balance. He also punishes everything under the sun(pun intended) w d4. Tick throws are decent. I haven't seen anyone mention that he can tick from b1, as well as b14 which hits low. But most importantly, PARRY! You absolutely cannot look at play this character believing he is built around command grab alone. His command grab and parry tools go hand in hand and directly counter the other's options as well as air grab. The most questionable thing about command grab is the lv3 positioning. It leaves you 3/4 screen away but you did you net 16% so maybe it's their way of implementing another form of balance.

BigMilk said:

Now I understand that I may not be the most knowledgeable of this character but I do believe I have a good understanding of this character. I don't believe the command grab system is as flawed as many believe. When you look at it alone it doesn't appear the most obvious but looking at his tools altogether I think it does. Here is my reasoning: Lv1 is 7%, lv2 is 11% which would be considered high damage pokes, as well as giving safe jumps. Considering the number of situations he can use command grab there should be some form of balance. He also punishes everything under the sun(pun intended) w d4. Tick throws are decent. I haven't seen anyone mention that he can tick from b1, as well as b14 which hits low. But most importantly, PARRY! You absolutely cannot look at play this character believing he is built around command grab alone. His command grab and parry tools go hand in hand and directly counter the other's options as well as air grab. The most questionable thing about command grab is the lv3 positioning. It leaves you 3/4 screen away but you did you net 16% so maybe it's their way of implementing another form of balance.

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A grappler does not use his command grabs as pokes, nor should they do the damage of them. 7% isn't good, 11% is mediocre.

Yes, he can tick off of B1 and B14, how is that even relevant.

D4 is 6f, that's good, how does that even begin to justify sun choke?

Parry is 9f, MB is 2f and it functions in a way that leaves it worse off than regular parries.

Qwark28 said:

A grappler does not use his command grabs as pokes, nor should they do the damage of them. 7% isn't good, 11% is mediocre.

Yes, he can tick off of B1 and B14, how is that even relevant.

D4 is 6f, that's good, how does that even begin to justify sun choke?

Parry is 9f, MB is 2f and it functions in a way that leaves it worse off than regular parries.

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I was stating b14 becauseno one mentioned it as one of his tick throws. But I was referencing his tools so people can see how much application his command grab has as well as understand why it makes sense. His tools together are what makes sense of his command grab system. I agree that lv1 & 2 damage sucks but we obviously aren't dealing with the conventional grappler. There is a reason most grapplers don't have parries.

BigMilk said:

Now I understand that I may not be the most knowledgeable of this character but I do believe I have a good understanding of this character. I don't believe the command grab system is as flawed as many believe. When you look at it alone it doesn't appear the most obvious but looking at his tools altogether I think it does. Here is my reasoning: Lv1 is 7%, lv2 is 11% which would be considered high damage pokes, as well as giving safe jumps. Considering the number of situations he can use command grab there should be some form of balance. He also punishes everything under the sun(pun intended) w d4. Tick throws are decent. I haven't seen anyone mention that he can tick from b1, as well as b14 which hits low. But most importantly, PARRY! You absolutely cannot look at play this character believing he is built around command grab alone. His command grab and parry tools go hand in hand and directly counter the other's options as well as air grab. The most questionable thing about command grab is the lv3 positioning. It leaves you 3/4 screen away but you did you net 16% so maybe it's their way of implementing another form of balance.

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I feel parry is overhyped. It has a lot of good things about it...at least the ex version. The normal parry's problem is that its 8f, making it impractical to actually use parry to negate a attack. Ex parry is good but it requires you to use a meter, then it boils down to why would you use ex parry over another move? It also has significant disadvantages, the fact that it can't block air attacks is huge.

The benefit of parry may not be as good as initially perceived. The reward is a damage buff yes, but parrying doesn't place your enemy at any real disadvantage. Making it very easy for them to follow up with more attacks.

Crayraven said:

I feel parry is overhyped. It has a lot of good things about it...at least the ex version. The normal parry's problem is that its 8f, making it impractical to actually use parry to negate a attack. Ex parry is good but it requires you to use a meter, then it boils down to why would you use ex parry over another move? It also has significant disadvantages, the fact that it can't block air attacks is huge.

The benefit of parry may not be as good as initially perceived. The reward is a damage buff yes, but parrying doesn't place your enemy at any real disadvantage. Making it very easy for them to follow up with more attacks.

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I actually agree with you. How I worded my post might have led you to believe I was saying that parry is really good or whatever, when I want. Just stating that it helps command grab make more sense along w his other tools. I do think that kotal's negative frames work well w his parry though.

BigMilk said:

Now I understand that I may not be the most knowledgeable of this character but I do believe I have a good understanding of this character. I don't believe the command grab system is as flawed as many believe. When you look at it alone it doesn't appear the most obvious but looking at his tools altogether I think it does. Here is my reasoning: Lv1 is 7%, lv2 is 11% which would be considered high damage pokes, as well as giving safe jumps. Considering the number of situations he can use command grab there should be some form of balance. He also punishes everything under the sun(pun intended) w d4. Tick throws are decent. I haven't seen anyone mention that he can tick from b1, as well as b14 which hits low. But most importantly, PARRY! You absolutely cannot look at play this character believing he is built around command grab alone. His command grab and parry tools go hand in hand and directly counter the other's options as well as air grab. The most questionable thing about command grab is the lv3 positioning. It leaves you 3/4 screen away but you did you net 16% so maybe it's their way of implementing another form of balance.

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Command grabs are not pokes. Not even close. Would you use a poke that was -49 on block and only net you 7% on hit? That'd be like poking with Raiden's overhead then not comboing off of it on hit. That's the kind of risk inherent in his command throw. There's great risk and little reward. That's what this discussion is about. Not his tick throws, not his good pokes, or his parry. This thread is about the inherent design flaws and unbalanced risk/reward opportunity costs that keep Sun God from being as effective a grappler as he should be.

BigMilk said:

I actually agree with you. How I worded my post might have led you to believe I was saying that parry is really good or whatever, when I want. Just stating that it helps command grab make more sense along w his other tools. I do think that kotal's negative frames work well w his parry though.

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I feel its good on paper, not practically. When you look at the big picture, when players talk about what variation of kotal kahn's is good. It always ends up with war god being better and sun/blood god feeling like they have something missing. Right?

I feel there is a root cause to this, if you look at both sun/blood god. Mechanically they play identical with the exception of blood using totems and sun god using a command grab. War god is the only variation that replaces most of the moves that the other two variations use. So this leads me to believe that the root cause of both sun and war god feeling underwhelming is parry and sun stone. Perhaps more so parry.

There are a lot of negatives associated with parry...more so than positives. You get punished easily for incorrectly using parry. You get punished if the opponent uses a air attack when you use parry. You get punished due to the fact that normal parry has a 8f startup. The benefit when you parry is you get a damage buff, that lasts 3 secs. But due to kotal kahn's being slow, parry doesn't really put him at any advantage. So if you don't have any practical advantages, then why use it?

Crayraven said:

I feel its good on paper, not practically. When you look at the big picture, when players talk about what variation of kotal kahn's is good. It always ends up with war god being better and sun/blood god feeling like they have something missing. Right?

I feel there is a root cause to this, if you look at both sun/blood god. Mechanically they play identical with the exception of blood using totems and sun god using a command grab. War god is the only variation that replaces most of the moves that the other two variations use. So this leads me to believe that the root cause of both sun and war god feeling underwhelming is parry and sun stone. Perhaps more so parry.

There are a lot of negatives associated with parry...more so than positives. You get punished easily for incorrectly using parry. You get punished if the opponent uses a air attack when you use parry. You get punished due to the fact that normal parry has a 8f startup. The benefit when you parry is you get a damage buff, that lasts 3 secs. But due to kotal kahn's being slow, parry doesn't really put him at any advantage. So if you don't have any practical advantages, then why use it?

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I would actually say Sun Stone is better than Sword Throw myself. Almost everything you can do with sword throw can be done with Sun Stone, and it's faster, more consistent, and leads to better damage in the corner.

Second Saint said:

Command grabs are not pokes. Not even close. Would you use a poke that was -49 on block and only net you 7% on hit? That'd be like poking with Raiden's overhead then not comboing off of it on hit. That's the kind of risk inherent in his command throw. There's great risk and little reward. That's what this discussion is about. Not his tick throws, not his good pokes, or his parry. This thread is about the inherent design flaws and unbalanced risk/reward opportunity costs that keep Sun God from being as effective a grappler as he should be.

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I understand that command grabs are not pokes. I compared its damage to pokes because it's just applicable where you would use pokes that happen often. I agree there is a design flaw looking at most grapplers but what iI an trying to do is understand/justify why things are that way, and looking at it I think it's because of what I started above.

Crayraven said:

I feel its good on paper, not practically. When you look at the big picture, when players talk about what variation of kotal kahn's is good. It always ends up with war god being better and sun/blood god feeling like they have something missing. Right?

I feel there is a root cause to this, if you look at both sun/blood god. Mechanically they play identical with the exception of blood using totems and sun god using a command grab. War god is the only variation that replaces most of the moves that the other two variations use. So this leads me to believe that the root cause of both sun and war god feeling underwhelming is parry and sun stone. Perhaps more so parry.

There are a lot of negatives associated with parry...more so than positives. You get punished easily for incorrectly using parry. You get punished if the opponent uses a air attack when you use parry. You get punished due to the fact that normal parry has a 8f startup. The benefit when you parry is you get a damage buff, that lasts 3 secs. But due to kotal kahn's being slow, parry doesn't really put him at any advantage. So if you don't have any practical advantages, then why use it?

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I was under the impression that a connected parry works as the opponents move whiffs allowing you to punish recovery frames. Ex: jax dash punch is -7 but when parried you can punish w s1 which is 10 frames.

@Second Saint I do agree w most of your post however you can't talk about character design without mentioning all of their tools which was my entire point. Maybe Kotal isn't a grappler just because he has a command grab. Would you consider Fei Long, Yun, Yang, Makoto, Cyrax etc all grapplers simply because they all have command grabs?

BigMilk said:

@Second Saint I do agree w most of your post however you can't talk about character design without mentioning all of their tools which was my entire point. Maybe Kotal isn't a grappler just because he has a command grab. Would you consider Fei Long, Yun, Yang, Makoto, Cyrax etc all grapplers simply because they all have command grabs?

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All of those characters have solid tools, mixups and ways of opening up their opponent.

Kotal has no mixups, no + frames, no jumps.

Just 1 special that opens up his opponent. And it's horrible at best, easily being the worst command throw in the game.

BigMilk said:

I understand that command grabs are not pokes. I compared its damage to pokes because it's just applicable where you would use pokes that happen often. I agree there is a design flaw looking at most grapplers but what iI an trying to do is understand/justify why things are that way, and looking at it I think it's because of what I started above.

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It's just that I don't agree with the comparison being applicable at all. And I don't find your reasons for why he is designed this way particularly convincing. Yes, d4 can punish a lot of things...for 3% and either a throw or a block string after with the hit advantage you get off of it. Not exactly crippling.

His parry is another issue that probably deserves it's own discussion thread. It's theoretically good, but in practice, it kind of flounders. I wish it worked against jump ins. You might be able to understand just how much I hate people that jump in at me all day when I can barely do anything about it, d2 having a weird hitbox, airthrow being inconsistent, and d3...well I should use that more.

He's unsafe as hell, his only options for opening people up are his throws and frame traps, and the truth is his other moves DON'T make up for this.