Lokheit
Noob
- Subzero - Towards+FP now has 10 startup frames (down from 15)
- Subzero - Towards+FP,BP is now -2 on block (down from +2)
- Subzero - Down+FP now has 7 startup frames (down from 9)
- Subzero - Icy Slide now has 2 hits of armor
- Subzero - Frost Bomb no longer has armor and has 10 less recovery frames on hit and miss
- Subzero - Ice Burst is now -5 on block (up from -10)
- Subzero - Down+BP now has 11 startup frames (down from 12) and 4 active frames (up from 3)
- Subzero - fixed a bug where an opponent would drop out of a frozen reaction if Subzero blocked an attack on the same frame
- Subzero (Cryomancer) - Towards+BK,BP,FP+FK now does the same animation and damage as the other variations
- Subzero (Cryomancer) - added new special move Polar Puncture & Arctic Assault which functions as a command grab which can be special cancelled out of on hit
- Subzero (Cryomancer) - Frost Hammer & Crushing Hammer do 2 less damage
- Subzero (Cryomancer) - Towards+FP,BP is now -7 on block (down from 0)
- Subzero (Cryomancer) - Towards+FP,BP,BP is now -14 on block (down from -9)
- Subzero (Unbreakable) - Barrier Of Ice now has 25 less recovery frames
- Subzero (Unbreakable) - Barrier Of Frost now has 15 less recovery frames
- Subzero (Unbreakable) - Ice Burst & Frost Bomb have increased pushback when Ice Aura or Frozen Aura are active
- Subzero (Grandmaster) - Ice Statue no longer has armor
General:
Frost Bomb loses armor (like most launchers), but has less recovery on hit (so better juggles) or miss. Ice Burst (meterless version) is now -5 on block down from -10 (safest string end now).
The move generally has some good applications BUT it's no longer an anti-air because it lost its armor, a bit of a nerf and a bit of a buff here.
D1 being 7 frames is good for all variations: the klone-less variations will benefit from a faster poke (it had no use before with D3 and D4 being as fast as D1) and GM will benefit for its corner juggles, specially against female hitboxes as a faster D1 increases the juggling window.
The uppercut is slightly better but nothing to write home about I think (and I don't see any mention on Cryo's uppercut, probably staying slow). At least he still has S1 as a good anti-air and they said it would be easier now to hit airborne opponents.
F1 is now much faster (from 15 to 10 frames) BUT all of his followups (specially the Cryo specific ones) are now worse on block. I think this mostly helps GM with his juggles (specially combined with the faster D1) as it's 5 frames more to land the ender for the klone setup. Honestly I was hoping for Cryo to have it removed and replaced with the rest of the F122 string (so it would start with the sword), not sure how the string being faster but now more negative will play out for him (it looks worse for his after knockdown gameplay to be honest).
Icy Slide getting 2 hits of armor I guess is fine, but the move was really fast anyway, not sure how it will play out. I guess it can help against trap setups.
Grand Master:
Indirect buff: Alien can't get his tail through the klone.
Indirect nerf: A lot of characters got multi-hit armor, so klone setups will be easier to escape now.
Overall as mentioned above he will get easier juggles thanks to faster D1 and F1 (both featured on his best corner combo setups) and probably won't have so many problems against females.
You will need to be very careful and sometimes try to bait opponents because a lot of them will be able to get out of the corner now.
He also lost the armor on EX Klone (along with most armored moves across the cast) so he can't make some cancels safe anymore.
Overal I think he's more honest and fair now and the corner game isn't as dominating as it used to be so he will be fine.
Cryomancer:
The command grab is an interesting addition but here are a couple of points:
- The grab damage is lower than it used to be 5% (12.5% if canceled into hammer) but at least you can compensate a bit as now you can use B12 in many combos where you used F42 before. The meterless damage will drop only a bit, but the damage scaling is also worse now (looking at the numbers on the screen, it went from 85% to 75%) so meter burn combos will have a damage reduction.
- Both hammers got their damage down by 2 points, which combined with the damage drop and heavier damage scaling on the grab brings overal damage down.
Also I want to point out that there is no mention on EX Grab having armor or not (will need to check in the lab) or if EX Hammer got extra armor hits (it would make more sense for this slow move than for the fast slide, but probably it even lost the only armor hit as it's a launcher).
F12 even with the faster F1 still is still a slow neutral tool and now F12 and F122 are both worse on block (no more neutral advantage after knockdown jump setup which was an essential part of his game).
Cryo didn't have its neutral game fixed (I was really hoping the F1 would've been a sword starting string) and combo damage is going down, but at least now he has a faster poke and a grab to tick throw so finally he is more of an offensive character (he never was before, he was just a punisher and a bad one). I will be labbing him really hard during the comming weeks (will have to wait a couple of days as I got issues to attend in the comming days though), I'm not sure if this will be so good (other grapplers have better pokes, better neutral and better damage at the same time) but I'm excited to re-learn him and maybe I'm surprised with this new Cryomancer so time will tell and I hope his other tools compensate for worse buttons than most grapplers.
The EX grab and hammer having armor (won't know until the patch is available) would be huge factors.
EDIT: The fact that most armored moves either don't have armor anymore or have multi armor, makes Air Hammer even worse than before, so if it had no use at all, now it's just decoration lol.
Unbreakable:
The faster recovery on the parry is nice and the EX one will be really hard to punish so that's a good thing. Pushback on aura enhanced burst and bomb combined with burst being less negative could give mini block jails from F4xxEXAura.
They mentioned that the aura slide retaining its armor made it a great move now that most launchers are losing their armor, but I want to remind everyone that the damage scale on that move sucks a lot, so we will see if the lack of armor on launchers across the cast makes this one so good or not.
Overal I think GM is now more honest and Cryo and UB are both a bit better, but just a bit and there were compensation nerf bits here and there, which is a good thing as I didn't want something over the top, but time will tell if it's enough in the new meta. I want to take some time analyzing the whole picture with the state of other characters, I'm not sure yet about Cryo's and UB's position now but at least I will have a lot of fun in the lab.
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