I’m in camp “leave big supers (mostly) alone.” The ones that are a problem are problems because of the rest of the character decks they’re attached to. Menelker is a great example of this: he’s got the highest damage super in the game, and he’s (at best?) somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to tiers. Max Anarchy is a problem because it’s an amazing super on an otherwise already amazing character. Same with Beast Unleashed. Grave is in A-tier probably on the strength of TPoS alone.
Could Troq or Menelker or Grave take a 5 damage nerf to their supers? Sure, but I don’t think it would be meaningful to any of their gameplans. If you get hit with either of those supers, 5 damage isn’t going to make any difference to you - that’s a fraction of a combat loss worth of damage.
So I guess my argument would be, we’re getting rid of Zane’s MA because he doesn’t need it and it’s bad from a flavour perspective for your aggressive rushdown grappler guy to want to block forever as his Plan A. Troq is getting hit in the parts of his kit that let him turtle more effectively than a grappler should, so that he has to play a more fair version of his current playstyle.
All the other characters with big supers aren’t a problem in the current meta, so let’s leave them outside the scope of this exercise just so we can focus on balance concerns and bad MUs.
What does Vendetta need? I suggest we replace his existing J with whatever it is, and just make AA deal 20.
As a “haven’t given this more than 10 seconds of thought” suggestion, what if Ven’s J was a 1cp ender, 0.0 speed attack that dealt no damage and knocked down? His biggest trouble MUs as far as I know are Valerie and Grave - both because they have really efficient single Aces on top of their usual reversals (and Grave because he has a counter that makes Acro unreliable as an answer to raw TPoS).
edit: I immediately thought “oh god, does this make Ven Gloria even more Ven advantaged,” but then I saw that it’s sitting at Ven 4-6 Gloria at the moment. Admittedly with only 40 games played, which isn’t much data, but at least it’s not exacerbating an issue.
Crap, do we need to re-think “Crash Bomb can be interrupted by KD moves” in light of Ven’s 7-attack against Zane? Previously Zane had K, J, Aces, and Joker to undercut it, but if 7-attack beats K, does Vendetta become too oppressive to Zane? …I mean, I know it’s only 7 damage at a time, but it’s literally a one-card looping unblockable, and with the threat of attack-side K as a mix-up to punish wake-up AA…?
enomus had Val and Lum as the only mus worse than 4-6 for Ven on his matchup chart. I think Lum is his worst mu personally, but I’m no expert.
Ven players have typically been against giving him a move faster than 1.0 for flavor reasons. 20 dmg AA would be a small, safe buff. I could get behind that.
Zane-Ven has always been a swingy matchup. As Bomber just mentioned Zane also has 2 to wakeup with. If Zane gets the 1.0 MA rework that would be a functional wakeup option as well. Ven’s only meaty answers are AAA and Acro so it seems fair for him to have good oki vs. Zane.
Would it break anything (pre-emptive answer: almost certainly) to have the redesigned MA at speed 0.9? I mostly have been thinking about this for flavor reasons, since Bison’s super had a tiny bit of invulnerability and 1.0 is considered to be the fastest speed of any move without “invulnerability frames” in Yomi. Thus, it would cleanly beat any move without invulnerability and be cleanly beaten by any other move with invulnerability. Also, 0.9 is just weird in that signature Zane way!
That said, while it’s nice for flavor I don’t know if it would end up causing problems… It probably will, let’s be honest, but I thought I’d bring it up.
I can tell you it would make the Zane mirror hilarious because every time it was used as an answer to meaties both players would have their hands reshuffled. I consider this a plus though
It lets Zane undercut Gloria Q, BBB ranged normals, and Ven K when KD which isn’t great but these mus probably wouldn’t be too bad after damage and MA nerfs. On the other hand it would undercut Oni/Sets/Val/Grave single A, and Zane is probably disadvantaged to these characters after damage and MA nerfs.
It doesn’t make a huge difference either way. 0.9 makes it more unique and I didn’t know that fact about Bison so it sounds like it’s flavorful as well. The biggest potential issue is Gloria so if that matchup turns out to not be too bad after Zane nerfs I could see making it 0.9.
What if Ven J was just “discard this card to search your deck for any card - this move cannot be countered.” Since one of Ven’s defining weaknesses in the current format is the incredible specificity of his kit, this would at least help him there.
I’m struggling to think of what kind of move you could possibly put on it. He already has two command grabs in addition to his normal throw. He probably doesn’t need a special dodge. It can’t be a block, since special ranks aren’t even or odd. So an attack, but what kind of attack would be useful to him?
His 2 is his bread and butter poke. He’s got throw punish off his K and 5. His 7 is his command normal knockdown ender. His Q is a universal linker with good damage.
I’m specifically not excluding Aces from his tutor because his Aces aren’t particularly oppressive or impressive, and this helps him avoid potentially discarding other pieces of his kit that he needs in order to get Aces as a wake-up option, or as damage for his ender.
Maybe excluding Jokers is good, but… Ven has 75 HP, which is low even when he gets two Acros during a match sometimes. So maybe giving him two Jokers practically guaranteed is fine?
Ven-Lum is not that bad. Ven has great dodge followups. Setsuki is definitely his worst MU bar none. Val isn’t that great either, but Ven is sneaky there. His 2 is still fairly baller and can Acro after burst of speed for extra annoyance.
Instead of his current J, his AA goes to 20 damage, and his current J becomes a 1cp ender, 0.0 attack that does 0 damage and knocks down.
…or his J doesn’t have any move on it, and just becomes “discard this card to search your deck for a card and add it to your hand - this cannot be countered.”
Isn’t J the tool that enables Vendetta to convert his worse cards into reliable damage? What is the rationale for wanting to get rid of Tumbling Strike?
