Mileena's Low Pounce says peek a boo.
There are command grabs that you can't escape by ducking or crouching. In this game though, instead of having to get airborne or hit it during startup, you can full on attack through the grab even eating through the armor. You wouldn't be able to cancel any string into grab for free damage if NRS programs the frames right and offers smart tick throws. Right now IIRC Kotal has 3 spots to tick throw excluding down normals while EB has 7. Granted you can duck EB's but I think that's good because he does so much. Grabs now have noticeable recovery and something having a lot of it doesn't mean it's bad. Getting Hugo or Cerebella to whiff a grab has gotten punished a bunch of times. Heck in Tekken you can duck the standard normal throws and people punish that along with other duckable moves all the time. Grapplers have had great yet risky mind games giving them great benefits if they succeed in most games. It's just in MKx where landing one doesn't even seem that good by itself.
The downside is that the "traditional" ones like Zangief, Hugo, or T.Hawk are slow and succeed by conditioning the opponent and making reads. Capcom also balances this by giving them more than average health so they can afford a bad guess or two and still come out on top. They also usually get normals with more than average damage and some decent range so they can reach you with something. And at least one way to get around projectiles and to close the distance quickly. Skullgirls plays like the Marvel vs games, so it is quite mobile. Cerebella has a weird glide, armored run, and projectile counter to help her deal with everything that can be thrown at her in the game. She still is the slowest character and really has to be careful and decisive with what buttons she sticks out. The characters have obvious and easy to exploit weaknesses from afar but once a player beats those weaknesses they can go into a scary gameplan of either buttons to catch you moving or grab if you're still. Mind you they still have to "guess" what you will do and some moves have invincibility on them that will blow throw whatever they were doing. One mistake and your opponent can once again get away from you and go back to whittling you down like before.
...and/or change their terrible inputs.
All this would just bring them to mid tier like every grappler ever. No character is top tier based off of conditioning, reads, and flat out guesses that either lead to one off damage or getting punished and having to get close again.
This too. why not b,d,f? Or f,d,b? or just 2 directions like Kotal's? I'm so glad capcom is just doing regular half circles and not one of the most uncomfortable motions since the 80s-90s fighters that came out. I'd take 2363214 and 63214x2,6 on some animu/KoF stuff before d,b,f. Lol nah im joking please no fighting game dev ever do any of those 3 motions. ESPECIALLY, when you don't need to.
They are supposed to be especially scary in the corner cause 2 resets or good wakeup reads will lead to half heath. Thing is if they're wrong they have way more work cut out for them to even get to that advantageous position again. Which needs a punish, setup, read, overall great play to actually start again anyways. No grappler just gets what they want yolo free. At least no good designed grappler I ever seen.
Idk I got a guy on my friend's list who plays him and felt he was ok. Said his strings were mediocre. I for one can't call someone that side switches and throws the opponent away on grab the best grappler. I'd put Kano there if he had 3-5 ticks off of strings. I'm feeling Kotal though. (I'm only including characters whose grabs hit standing and crouching opponents regardless of blocking.)
22 was only string that confirmed on block or hit. Sadly his throws could be jumped out of but I still destryoed people in OkI. Shazam is the deffinition of vortex without the whole vortexes are only standing reset bullshit. Funny thing people never knew about him is that if you do his cimmand grab on hard knockdown at the perfect time, it snuffed everything. And yes you can test it on ai wakeups in trainer
Exists in other fighting games, why not here? It's not like tick grabs jail you into eating the command grab, you can get out by neutral jumping, armoring(sometimes possible) or backdashing. Also if they actually designed command grabs correctly it would allow for them to make the character have some negatives for having such a strong tool, like for example how most grapplers have large hitboxes and are generally slow(not always the case but Zangief, Tager, Potemkin, Grundy, etc).
They ready have characters with big negatives. Their names are goro and ferr/torr. They just left out the throwing part.
I don't play Ferra/Torr, but I wish NRS would buff him because everyone gets so hype whenever anyone plays him.
Not attacking you but I really hope no fighting game ever does this. I'm cool with nerf/buffing something cause it's just too damn simple and you want open up more brainwork but balance for casual play is the worst thing that could possibly happen. Considering some of the things NRS has done, I don't put it past them to make an actually good grappler character who doesn't get shut out by most of the cast only to nerf him cause grab setups too powerful for mashing casuals.
I agree, but I think its a part of the discussion now before they put changes into affect.
Yeah i guess that is a possibility somewhere huh? I'm having fun with Kotal's and EB's tick throws. Kotal is probably as close to a whiff punishing grappler as I'm going to get in this game since tremor didnt get a command grab. EB is fun just cause he has the most ticks and is good at everything else.
I play Sun God too. He could use an anti-zoning tool, but I feel like he's not disadvantaged against any character from midrange to up close - including Kung Lao.
Yeah I feel Kotal basically has a KF slide type deal. He can quickly launch you for 30% easy from mid screen, it's just not a low. Plus I never really use meter after a while once I get level 3 grab. So then I can pick between damage, armored grabs and ex sun disk. One of the reasons I like playing Brawler Cassie too.
Well it depends how good the 50/50 is. You'd only have to worry about the grab when blocking and on wakeup. Usually the more rushdown characters who have a command grab don't have a lot of range of their grab. So it used sparingly. I think MK has a normalized health pool which might mean they'd have to go about developing characters differently. Though there are characters in other franchise that have an overhead, low, and a command grab. Heck in Tekken pretty much the whole cast has this. MKx is the only game where the rushdown 50/50 plan is the most efficient and powerful plan in a game. However that might change as better play develops. You usually don't see such skewed playstyles in other games.
