i think the biggest issues with high health character is the meter they gain by being hit, it feels hard to discourage them from making mistakes because they're basically guaranteed meter to fight back at some point. maybe reducing the amount of meter they gain from getting hit or making burst rate slower would help
They removed Dizzy's Fire Spear loops but gave Pot back his Kara Garuda loops. They knew Pot was strong and a problematic character and they also suspected Dizzy was weak. That's all you need to know about the amount of time they spent on the rebalance.
I'm in no position to be making balancing decisions, but there is one change i want above all others. Garuda needs to be reverted to strike, or needs to have way less frame advantage so it's not loopable on itself
Yeah garuda needs the change and back mega fist needs it’s special property for kara canceling reverted Cuz he now he can basically have a forward mega fist but with the plus frames from back mega fist
You're just bad, there has always been a gap unless it was meaty, and not being kgaruda not being pushed back restores the original intent of the move. On s1 guard crushes didn't get pushed back by FD, and that got changed because of Goldlewis. Garuda caught strays from Goldlewis and you forgot because you all weren't around, don't play the character, or never learned the matchup.
Leaving a comment before I finish the video. A lot of the Pot rework prior to this patch didn't make sense to me. The game instills a 5F throw invuln because every mash is 5F (or faster), but having armor on the 5th frame of Pot Buster ignores this. He already had the means of frame traps to beat fuzzy mashes, but it's now all consolidated into Pot Buster. Pot buster has to be beaten by jumps or back-dashes now, but then that opens you up to PRC OSes. Originally the true un-mashable throw situation was achieved via Garuda GC. I'm not sure why they felt compelled to buff Garuda when Pot can already achieve similar results without it. The karas returning is cool, but it feels like too much now.
I think the patch seems like a step in the right direction for sure, but there are still some notable outliers in terms of balance (Johnny, Zato, maybe GL) and I think they probably introduced some nonsense with Potemkin karas as a Ram player I think the nerfs make sense and don't feel bad - I might've expected even another second or two on the sword recovery. K>Dauro was ridiculous, and the Rekka 1 loops felt silly too. Still miss Rekka 2 cancels, and I do think Calvados feels pretty strange/limited right now, but that's a minor issue.
lol I think this is probably closer to the truth than anything. I think strive from the outset has been focused around mid to lower level play which I'm not completely against, but at the same time I think they can still get this to a better state. I think this season update threw them off a bit and this will probably not be the last balance patch we see this season
@@adultbrianI'm mid-level and stopped playing this game mostly a while ago. They keep making decisions that make the game less and less fun. So don't stick the blame on all of us crappy players. I think the bigger issue is they clearly haven't put enough thought or testing into their changes. All the bugs and balance issues would have been picked up with good QA. Clearly they're not doing this. At least Strive led me to Xrd. While that game also has a ton of bullshit, at least it's done and the balance and beginner and intermediate levels is actually pretty decent and good defensive mechanics in addition to wild offense.
@@AdamJorgensen to each there own but I haven't noticed a patch yet in the lifetime of the game that made it noticeably worse or better. Maybe I've never been good enough to notice, maybe the characters I've played havent been as effected but I've enjoyed the entire life of strive and no patch has effected my enjoyment of playing it personally. Thats not to say I think the game is perfect or they havent made misteps but overall its the fighting game that has brought me the most enjoyment over the years. I've played xrd and accent core and still come back to strive. But thats just me and im definitely a filthy casual lol
You would think Axl would be doing amazing with big semislow characters like Potemkin, Goldlewis, Nago, and Slayer (kinda) at the top of the tierlists but no.
Pot 13:00 killed the game for me tbh On paper he doesn't make sense... An anti zoning Grappler that doesn't necessarily need he's command grab to do high damage, best anti airs of the game, slow but has 2 armored advancing moves that if it connects he gets access to he's best winning condition that its just spamming Garuda which they took away now the pushback so he's always in your face And with pot buster having armor now people use it like it was a DP 💀 There is no defending the character is messed up
@Chocolatebeeef Dude first 3 weeks of season 4 Pot was being played everywhere. Im not going to play a Lobby that has 10 Pots, 5 Rams, 5 Goldlewis and the rest Slayers, Nagos and Sins Its pretty much pick your poison game fell off for me
@@dabiggestratintown I play Bedman? I played him in Celestial and with him Pot isn't much of an issue... but beginning of Season 4 i really felt interest on Maining Dizzy in which it was just pain and seeing the state of the game i really felt like it was my time to stop playing. Oh why not just go back to Bedman? Well i dont want to ive already mastered the character i felt it was just time to move on to the next character that i like in which in the current state of the game i dont like anyone enough to keep playing.
@@Chocolatebeeef also interesting so you are gonna run away forever from match ups? That doesn't sound like a good balanced game so why even keep playing? Like i could be godlike playing but the fact that just one character can shut you down because there's so little counter play to them plus they can kill you in only 2 interactions... Even on victory doesn't feel good and at this point im not even talking about only Pot but in general any of the high health high damage characters that for me killed the game
Overall actually really happy with the patch im enjoying the game again but there's a ton of small, random things i keep seeing and im like "why??" Like how the fuck did Nago dodge the damage nerf this patch? How did May dodge the 6P nerf last patch?? These universal changes are not so universal for the privileged characters, are they?
I went back to look, and the 6P thing is a good point. They stated they wanted 6P *standardized* across the board. Characters with unusually fast 6P recovery got nerfed, and those with unusually slow recovery got it buffed. But I looked back at the numbers, and Ram and May were two characters with 18f recovery on 6P. Ram's was nerfed to 23f, yet May's was left untouched.
@ Yes I agree, i think the armor is some kusoge type shit and he should have normal PB range decreased back to normal. I mentioned the Kara range being the same specifically because it was mentioned in the video as if it was a new broken thing Pot got in season 4, at least that’s how it came across to me.
@@StickySubstanceConsumer I'd rather they just remove the armor from PB because it's so irrelevant to Pot's gameplan but leads to so much dumb shit like Roundstarts.
@@StickySubstanceConsumerI believe SQ pointed out that PB can't be countered with single attacks on roundstart (why Ram got grabbed even after using 5k). Only very few have multiple attacks at that range like f.s of Gio and Dizzy that should be able to counteract armored PB
Pot is way too strong against zoners. No grappler should be sitting full screen doing fireballs. He completely invalidates most zoner kits/pressure/nuetral. He's probably in a good state compared to the rest of the cast, but most of his anti-zoning tools trump entire movesets of other characters. It's just dumb. If they made his super armor vulnerable to projectiles, he'd be in a much better place imo. There's no way he needs 5 universal anti projectile moves in his kit... Not when he's this strong, at least.
Which Zoner are you refering to? (Imo, only Axl can be called a real zoner. But I understand Dizzy, Testament and Happy Chaos can use some range pressure). Hammer Fall is super negative on block, same for Heat Tackle. And both can be beaten by multi-hit moves. His Slide Head can be reacted since they made it slower for S4. Potemkin is very strong but he still has his drawbacks, and those can be labbed against way more easily than characters like Chipp and all their weird setups that need some execution.
@@jessierocket8227 Neither axl nor testament have multihit moves they can realistically use to beat armor, and it's by far Slide Head and Flick that are the most problematic for zoners. If the potemkin is willing to play reactively those two moves just invalidate the toolkits of the zoning characters and force them to either just sit at full screen doing nothing or approach into pot's preferred range. Since slide head also does chip damage, that means you just have to be constantly watching for it to try and dodge or iad punish. Not to mention how fucked up hammerfall break is this patch to the point where its a real reaction check on top of the old school hammerfall prc which is one of the game's strongest neutral skips.
@@Cobalt01 Axl indeed has a very well-known multi-hit he really uses, it's his Rensen (also called Sickle Flash), it's a 3hits move, and they made it easier to use. They also added the tornado with multi-hits. They both can be Flicked, but it's to the Axl to know when to use them to reduce/negate odds to be Flicked. His Command grab from afar also catches Slide Head, but that's a risky call for Axl if not done properly.
@@Cobalt01 I forgot to answer about Testament, they have their Stain mechanic which is what makes all their move a multi-hit if they succeeded to apply Stain, so they don't have to fear armor anymore in this situation. Btw, to Flick the crow still applies Stain on Potemkin.
I think with Pot it's a case of listening to the playerbase a bit TOO much instead.In the previous patch they basically stated that they wanted the character to be able to succeed without relying on doing some jank kara inputs. So they removed them and buffed him in compensation. However the feedback from basically everyone (both pot players and non pot players) really questioned the changes and basically demanded he got the karas back, so they basically said "i guess people think that would be fine" and they slapped them on top.
We suffered for far too long ..And I feel like i was clearly better than most of my opponents..Now these mofo’s gonna reap what they sow..zangief being good is a turn of the times ..
I really feel like if they just adressed the health values of the higher health characters they would feel soooo much more bearable (It's not ideal but at this point i'll just take that).
I very much appreciate your point about the unfair damage changes. Millia, Faust, and Axl have to hit these big bodies like 600 times, and they still get slapped with damage nerfs? I just don't understand the thought process other than "We have to nerf all of the big ticket damage items. ALL OF THEM." but they didn't even do that, as you pointed out with Nago.
I always love how much I agree with sq cause sometimes I feel crazy or ungrateful and then she just says exactly what I'm thinking. Testament buffs are great but if you were already good at working around the hurt boxes the changes don't effect you at all and the character still loses to johnny, pot, and ram nothing really changed match ups or gameplay wise
This patch felt like it was mostly hits but then had a few really baffling misses. Why is potemkin like this? Johnny barely got touched for some reason, dizzy got her power shifted around in a way that's probably a nerf overall, potemkin, zato not even mentioned, potemkin, etc. As a testament and dizzy player I can speak most to those characters. Testament's grave reaper change is an odd one, because it was kinda just a thing that mattered pretty rarely. The only matchup where the opponent really had to rely on that was I-no since she has no way to contest testament 236h other than her 2h. Other than that, it seems to only really come up once or twice a set. Maybe specific players would target that extended hurtbox more but I only ever really saw it when people contested f.s > 236s on block, which was kinda stupid to exist in the first place. The stain buff is actually more impactful at least for me, since it puts less pressure on me to pop stain and force a turn and instead lets me maybe go for an extended shimmy without having to worry about stain running out before i can do anything else. Character probably shouldn't have the disjoint if only for ino's sake, but the stain buff is nice. Solid mid tier and I'm happy with it. For Dizzy, this character makes me sad. She's so fun to play casually, but the moment I bring her into a ft3 set I wonder why I even bothered. The opponent meter build on freeze is just too punishing, and without freeze you're locking yourself out of both oki and damage off a good chunk of her hits. I'm very disappointed that they haven't decided that's worth addressing. As far as her changes in the patch, the Chestnut change is probably one that should have happened since the loops were pretty cringe, but it left her without any really usable + frames other than 6[h]. At this point her pressure is only a bit better than axl's, but she didn't get enough power in other places to make up for the loss. The projectile kill on Chestnut is very strong for certain situations, but the knockdown it gives isn't long enough for her to set up her best oki (fish > dash jump mix) when used midscreen, so you're stuck with running up with your -ob c.s to run incredibly basic stagger pressure most of the time. I really want to be able to play this character in tournament but I just don't feel like its worth my time.
I think the Grave Reaper change matters quite a bit. That hurtbox was the difference between getting clipped by quite a few things, purposely or accidentally. I'm a Testament player but when I would play against Testament I would purposely snipe Grave Reapers with Beyblade because I knew just how big that hurtbox was. Most people don't know shit about Testament so it getting properly taken advantage of was rare, but it could and did happen. I think it made doing Reaper into Reaper stronger now too. It's not a super common tactic so it would stop sign people pretty effectively, and now with the buff I saw it beat Nago trying to Beyblade between them easily. It can also clash with things it definitely would have lost to before and leave Testament at the advantage if they are ready for it. I think it's a meaningful buff that seems less meaningful than it is because it isn't something that necessarily looks different or is going to be something that is purposely taken advantage of by a Test player because it's a very passive buff. Testament's will mostly play the same but will deff be safer doing it. No more accidentally getting clipped by a move that just happened to be active a smidge too long, whether the opponent meant it or not.
@@_Deez IDK, maybe it's just my playstyle tends to be less focused on spamming reaper in neutral than other testament players. I wouldn't even be doing reaper against nago to begin with unless he was high enough blood that he wouldn't want to clone or beyblade.
@Cobalt01 OH shit it's Cobalt. I'm in both the community and resource Discord lol. Dunno how I didn't recognize your name at first. That's fair and it definitely was quite a risk pre patch but some people would just keep running into the projectile i noticed so I eventually just started to spam it every now and then and it would force people to change their approach. I would unironically clip Ky's trying to force Stun Dipper RC against me like 3 or 4 times cause it's all they fuckin know lol. Was it worth the risk? Probably not. But I only play in tower so it's not like I'm losing anything but the round/match. And yeah I feel you about being conservative against Nago when he has resource. Some people just can't help themselves or just slip up and forget Fukyo Beyblade comes for all
Basically my sentiments and added a bunch of nuance I didn’t think of. Goldlewis’ “nerfs” were laughable. I really like the idea of using defense on chaining behemoths, but it should be like Ram in the sense that his offense should have been toned down to compensate. Put his oppressive block strings and massive damage behind chaining behemoths. Hoping they follow this one up quickly with another one to address all the remaining issues. The concept they’re going for sounds far better than the implementation so far.
This was pretty on the money. It’s exceedingly upsetting because it is highly unlikely this game will be getting another update for another 6 months and the quality of updates only seems to worsen as time passes. This was an opportunity to move things in the right direction but not only did they miss the mark, again, it only sows doubt in players that things will actually improve substantially in the future, which is not what you want 4+ years into a game’s lifespan.
I think that's what bothers me the most. Venom should probably arrive in 1-2 months (given that Unika is supposed to be in "Spring 2025") and overall I'd be ok with this patch if we already knew for sure that there's gonna be another big balance pass with Venom. But we just can't know, because they do it whenever the hell they want with seemingly no proper cadence and no communication until right before it happens. I was so ready to give them a pass if the emergency patch was kinda off the mark but it's the best they can do before Christmas. But they were SO off the mark and there was no communication that they are planning to rectify it any time soon that they are just blowing up any good will that players might have still had with them.
Pot is just... why though? They gave him obscenely strong counters to his main weaknesses, they gave him better checkmate situations (Garuda Buffs, Hammerfall change, Pot Buster buffs means more PRC OS checkmates), but then he didn't really lose anything, despite the aim of this patch supposedly being to emphasize character identity. You would think that akin to Nago, Pot's identity focuses on tradeoffs, but he's kinda just always good. You win an interaction, he's tanky, he gains meter and can now enforce a "win or win harder" situation. Fighting Pot (especially as an Asuka main) is a situation where even if the Pot plays badly, you are always one interaction away from a guess for game situation, but the reverse is very rarely true due to the health disparity and your inability to ever go for slower options due to armor and Pot's very strong distance options (can't go for much in way of projectiles due to flick, can't go for distance setup or moves like Arbiter due to Slide Head, can't go for slower air options due to HPB or HT), but if you're in his face as a zoner, you're locked out of half your tools *on your own offense* and are literally guessing for game, after winning neutral in a MU where you can't use half your neutral options and have to play reactive into RPS Jesus. When the last few patches have had characters like Ram, Slayer, Nago, and GL be consistently strong, it feels like there's just no reason to ever play zoners, because the characters you're *meant* to counter have significantly stronger options into you than you have into them (on top of the damage and eHP difference) but then zoners are often somewhat limited into more versatile characters, so you end up in a situation where your best matchups are okay and your worst are some of the worst in the game, but the characters that your archetype ordinarily counters are instead some of your worst matchups and somehow get bigger buffs than you do each patch.
i’m really happy they want to increase the amount of interactions, i think that is exactly what the game needed. but i think the implementation is flawed. why did they disproportionately nerf certain characters. the fact that Johnny, Nago, and Goldlewis nearly got missed by this recent patch is just idiotic.
This isn’t common knowledge but each move is individually hardcoded now and some of the choices are weird. Basically 6k still doesn’t have the sliding property they took away and it’s just coded to give momentum when 6k is Kara’d. Pot buster is about the same (iirc it’s like, a pixel longer) but kara Garuda is noticeably longer. Infact, aside from slidehead and flick everything is longer than it was pre-patch (only effectively in the case of PB but still). He has a bunch of new niche Giganter pickups now cause that got increased so much it’s still sliding post flash lol. The hammerfall/post pb animation change is the biggest buff he got honestly, real oki after command grab and super wallbreak was a huge boon for the character. They seem to have tripled down that people need to learn and interact with Garuda RPS. Which is odd cause most people pointed that as their most disliked aspect of the character but w/e. Ignoring the popular opinion on those balance choices, no matter how you slice it it seemed….ignorant. It wouldn’t surprise me if the reason they took away Kara’s is no one on the B-team handling the game now can do them tbh. It doesn’t feel like there’s someone great at the character doing these changes.
They need to stop hyping up new character releases and start actually touching on characters that have been in the game for years. Some of these changes are downright unacceptable.
before video: i like the direction arcs us is taking! they were very clear with their intent in the dev notes and they're clearly trying things out even if they make missteps along the way
after video: they still need to do a lot more before i pick up the game seriously again. they have a good idea of what they need to do, but they just need to hone in on doing that
The fact that Zato literally had zero changes despite being, yknow, the way he is, its ridiculous. Literally just reducing eddie cooldown would be enough. It frustrates me beyond belief that so many characters just get "fuck it" buffs and zato gets kicked further and further down the tiers, either by direct nerfs or power creep (see asuka/chaos). Like they might as well just be saying "we don't want this character to be fun" with the way they've changed him. Legit makes me sad.
i mean arcsys has said before that theyd rather buff the lowtiers then nerf the toptiers and for a small patch im pretty happy with it mosty cuz i play broken ass pot lmao but honestly i still wish theyd change him to where he got to run his offense by using your special moves to to play around your oponents bs to get a good hit instead of just walling your opponent to the corner notably revert megafist not only to get reward for it and also use kbmf in combos again and nerf hammerfall break and the speed a bit with hammerfall break currently hes really hard to push out from the corner and he feels just a little too fast for his own good make garuda a strike and honestly i think he should go back to having wwa it helps him wish problem mus but you actually need to do something right to get offense off of it where bwa kinda just feels like he throws out a giant button and now your holding guard crush 5050
Ngl, feel like I'm the only Pot main who holds this opinion. But, I didn't hate the removals of kara's. i think it made Garuda a little more obnoxious, but I never liked Guard Crush as a mechanic, so I'm sure there is a fix to that. He was simpler and partially a husk of his former self, but he was still fun. His playstyle was still what I came to him for in the first place. Not everybody liked the changes, but I think it was an OKAY change, NOT GREAT, but Okay and could've gotten better with continuous updates I love that Kara's are back, they were always fun, but not the forefront of why I loved Potemkin. ..... this emergency patch sucked tho. I love an emergency patch where Potemkin gets back all he lost and loses NOTHING in return. He's obnoxious and I hate playing him right now cause of that.
Great video. I don’t disagree. Currently in character limbo because it feels like Bridget is just going to be the forgotten character (outside of selling merch)
as a Floor 4-5 casual Johnny enjoyer (I also play Gio, Baken and a lttle bit of Sol), I'd say I'd be totally fine with some tweaks/nerfs to him. When I watch him at high level play, I have to admit that he does look kind of unfair and unfun to fight. His 50/50's are insane. I'd never be able to block them lol! I'm no expert on balancing a FG character tho, so what would u guys suggest?
None of us are "able" to block Johnny's 50/50 since it's unreactable (TK MF is 16 frames) and unfuzzyable . So don't worry, you're never blocking him or any other character with similar options. It's just guessing for your life
I think the first patch of Season 4 having the same level of quality as a patch that was realistically thrown together in a month to a month and a half says more about the first patch than the emergency patch my guy.
The issue with potemkin its that arcsystems is trying to make im more "accesible" and pot is one of those characters who shouldnt have easy feats, i think the true power of potemkin should be locked behind a skill barrier like karas, but giving him karas and buffing his skill floor level is stupid
I actually like the direction they went, with fun mostly being the main fix of this patch. My only issue is that Pot got his kara's back and got none of the changes made to work without Kara's removed, making him giga busted. Otherwise I like it mostly.
I feel like we do this every season, they make some dumb choices with "good intentions", we give them the benefit of the doubt and say it *overall* was a step in the right direction, and then we repeat this when they explode the meta again and we're all blocking overbuffed GL Drone. Look man, call me a doomer, but I don't feel the game has improved as a fighter since season 2, game has wacky changes that don't feel like they serve an overall strong core fantasy other then "power" and they don't implement strong changes and systems that can counter high "power" strategies, and they don't actually fix this stuff, it's always just moved elsewhere on the roster. Like for god sake they basically lied to us about the health changes, how do you mess that up? You're trying to increase health but are too scared to actually do it and buff a million moves to do more damage, it makes no sense, what do they ACTUALLY want this game to play like? Sorry, I'm just tired with this nonsense, it's been years, pick it the fuck up. Also good video, hope the game improves.
Health values in Strive has never made sense to me. In SF Zangief has the highest health at 110% of the base and Akuma has the lowest at 90%, the balance being Gief is big and slow and Akuma is a god character in every other regard. In Strive you have big bodies like Pot who are almost 20% above the median EHP and pixies like Chipp and Millia who are almost 15% below, but there's no accompanying power compensation. Chipp is just good, and Millia is downright bad.
Making a character god just because of low health is straight up toxic, like it doesn't really matter if you have "low health" if your opponent can't even touch you
You always do a great job of explaining your points! Even though I’m really enjoying the game in its current state, it does feel like they don’t have the resources to do what they want to do. The bugs of last patch, Rams craziness last patch and Potemkin this patch all feel like they didn’t adequately test the game. In the case of Potemkin, my guess is they knew this would be a problem, but after how last patch went they didn’t want to change too much so that they didn’t have to test quite as much. The game right now feels close so close to being amazing, but those flaws are glaring.
7:25 disagree completely did you watch CEO? Even top players are struggling to avoid losing 30-50 hp on chip from him on AVERAGE. Think about how this effects normal players SQ
I will mention for due diligance Pot had Kara pot buster at roundstart already. That isn't new. Sure it has armor now but that doesn't add much when it beat most round starts already.
Guard Crush block damage was too much of a blanket change. It really should of just been behemoth does less chip damage because other characters can't abuse guard crush on GL level. Because this change also nerfs Dizzy's H.Micheal value on it's block. Not to mention Dizzy being both nerfed and her major problem of how gravity affects resource gain causing frozen state to build the opponent meter and burst. And chestnut being made into a strike while pot gets to keep his projectile Garuda feels so lop sided. If all this patch was adjusting numbers across the cast i think that would of been pretty good with bigger changes coming with venom. But this just seems like such a misunderstanding of why things were as they were. Like you had a team A and a Team B working on the s4 patch and the s4 hot fix.
Pot main here: 1. KPB always reached roundstart. I believe arcsys stated themselves that while range on regular PB is buffed, the range on KPB is roughly the same. Armored buster is the biggest bait in the history of fighting games. It loses to 90% of mashes it was losing before and wins 90% of interactions it already won 2. Wallbounce on 6H is horrible. Instead of being consistent tumble it can now wallbounce therefore fking up your oki. 3. Garuda being projectile only affects bad pots as Kgaruda already had momentum to completely negate FD but back then it had more chip dmg and longer guard crush + CH 4. Loosing KBM made so pot has to rely on charged input of hammerfall for most combos. It's up to you if you like it or not but I despise it In the end pot IS stronger than he was before but he is less fun, less skillbased and more annoying to fight against. The death of my main (grinded him to top 50)
Maybe make the armor on Pot buster optional - make a command that charges the next buster as armored. Or remove it at all - I don't care about it that much.
Best scenario: the C team working on this while thinking about New Year's 😂 Meaning... the A (and B) teams are working on brand new unannounced fighting games! 🤞🤞
Bro testament getting reduction on hurtboxes is hardly something to complain about. Test deserves more buffs if anything as they’re often boring and too much a 2-step character. Test isn’t scaring anyone. Defined weaknesses is like Ram needing to recall her swords instead of arcsys being horny about keeping them on a timer despite not changing anything hard about it this patch. Defined weaknesses is making sin eat before getting stamina. Thats what should be cared about. Along with pot being a madman...
I'm not scared of Testament or worried they are too strong. I am pointing out how these types of balance changes are not good for the game as a whole as weaknesses and counterplay create more interesting matchups. I dont agree with buffing Testament much and would rather see other characters become weaker. Even if you were to buff Testament, I'd rather it be in more interesting ways that expand the amount of options, not one that just reduces counterplay. These types of changes happen every patch and its almost always bad. I just used this change as an example, even if it's less egregious than most.
Instead of building onto the Season 3 foundation they just threw everything in the trash, ruined several characters and overtuned others, now they made my boy Potemkin super strong, but I've lost all the trust in Arcsys so I am on a Strive break rn. The game is just in a crazy state rn, I can't take playing it seriously until it gets fixed and until a proper ranked system is added.
It feels very tone deaf to nerf heavily one of the top characters while barely touching the others. Also, the fact that they didn't change Zato implies they like how the character is and that's so disheartening it's almost funny. Also, going by how they treated Zato and HC so far, i'm almost wishing venom wouldn't be in the game out of fear of how he will turn out.
I started playing strive in s2 and its the first time ive seriously put in time into another fighting game besides tekken. I play both zato and devil jon ad mains. I am not pleased at all with either game rn. The easy bish boi characters are too strong woth no drawback.i wont be buying a s5 pass for ggst or for s2 tekken. My money is tight now
I think the base vision with the game is fundamentally flawed and full of ideas that ultimately don't work well in the long run which is probably why ASW are struggling to actually achieve good balance in the game. They want it to be explosive and they also think the corner is a devil that shouldn't exist. Honestly...maybe this is just the GG equivalent of SF5. A game that will ultimately be kinda fixed in the very end but always looked back on as a problem child. I may be a little biased tho 😅 Strive led me to Xrd and I haven't really looked back much since 😅
so like... I play at a highish casual level. Like I'm not competing, but I do fairly well for myself on the ladder, getting celestial isn't a challenge etc etc., I know pot hasn't won any majors, but can we stop pretending he's bad now? I actually really appreciate them trying to make pot more accessible to people who can't kara, but maybe armored kara was not the answer? Also I just... don't like where ram is at. At the beginning of the season she was quite literally broken, so I didn't want to learn how to play her because I didn't want to end up relying on that. Then they "fixed" her so maybe I could start learning her for real... and now they're getting close to the same dumpster they put her in for xrd. I don't necessarily want her to be broken, but I do want her to be fun.
He was made fun of for not being a good character for a long while, he's way stronger now and seems to be taken like a real threat, like every characters should be. I don't think he suddenly is top 1, which means there is still stronger picks than he currently is
@@jessierocket8227 Pot has been a viable character for pretty much the game's entire lifespan. Grapplers have inherently polarizing gameplay and tend to be kept "weaker" overall because that's the nature of a coinflippy high-reward gameplan. Having consistently strong tools in all situations means lacking the exploitable flaws that keep that gameplan from becoming toxic.
The game isn't fun. I just don't enjoy being rag dolled for 1/2 the time I am supposed to be playing. That's not a learn to play issue, the highest tournment tiers u got nnothing but examples of nobody getting to play for an entire set all over youtube. Half these characters seem blatantly unfair in respect to catching u in these combo locks.....positioning yourself makes no difference whatsoever as soon as they catch u in an attack at any distance ur just stuck facepalming looking away from the screen putting ur hands off the controller. Why is Abba allowed a dodge that she can then force u into a whiff and then combo lock u....why when i keep my distance does it make no difference and she can chain it into her jealous rage ragdoll stuff everytime....why does my punch not matter when potemkin grabs me....why anytime i try to do ram's rock the opponent immediately moves to attack and I'm helpless. HOW DO I KNOW if an attack is safe on crouch or stand when the animations aren't at all clear what the heck is being hit and from where. I don't find this fun at all. I am either bullying people in the lower floors or being bullied in the higher floors I go from floor 2 to 8 to 2 to 8 to 2 to 8 over and over. Nothing is apparent. THe solution is to buy 100$ worth of dlc and spend 100 hours testing everything so I know what is what....r u kidding me? I don't even like the inputs on this game the system is so unintuitive, u just have to memorize the timings of everything u cant go off what u see ingame. Half the time I input something it doesn't work for whatver reason. Tired of throwing an attack and it passing through the opponent cause they are in some invisible recovery status...why can't u make this visible to me the player? WOuld that be so horrible to give me indicators on where attacks hit me and when ppl r invulnerable and all that? Can I at least have it in training mode? It's not fun, I don't even enjoy watching this game anymore. The combo mode was a joke there's no combos I don't even know how u are expected to learn anything in this game the FREAKING TUTORIAL DIDN'T HAVE PERFECT BLOCKING OR PERFECT absolute defense blocking in it....I had no idea what those were turns out they have an official youtube video explaining what those are....but no mention in the ingame tutorial r u kidding me. The tutorial needs more stuff....the combo guide needs to be updated and relevant and have combos....and there needs to be community support built in so I know what the fk I am supposed to do when I need specific knowledge.
I think people are really overlooking just how much the Guard Crush chip damage changes affect Nagoriyuki. He needs 3-4 blocked slashes to reach the damage one slash used to do. It's unironically a big, noticeable nerf. Part of the power budget in his reworked H normals went toward that chip, and now its essentially gone. I'm not saying the character should or shouldn't have been nerfed, but pre patch you HAD to choose between burning health to conserve meter, or burning meter to conserve health. You wouldn't risk not FD-ing a couple of them. Everyone keeps saying that he really hasn't nerfed, but if you look at a before and after, he really was. The pressure those normals put on you is effectively gone. The patch even said they acknowledge how much this will effect him and that's why they didn't really nerf him otherwise. 5H and 2H are just big, slow, minus on block pokes. Initial S4 H normals were already worse than the pre rework versions, and MUCH less fun and engaging to use, and now itself even more so. They are way, way worse than the pre S4 normals, and way less fun to use, which i think is the important part. I wish we could just go back to before all these S4 reworks. They just aren't fun. Both to play with, and seemingly to play against.
I’m a Testament main, so I appreciate the buffs, but I also have to say I’m not a fan of how they further nerfed Ram. I think she’s the only character who just can’t get a semi-decent punish off a 5K or 2K now. They really needed to buff the range of her 2D so that 5K or 2K>2D at least functions at all ranges so you can get your offense started if you’re able to punish somebody with the attack. I can agree maybe 5K>Dauro was too strong, but 5K into nothing is kinda wild to me. Most characters can at least force a knockdown or a bit more of an advantage than that.
Very few characters can convert non-CH 5K into a knockdown at further ranges. Ram getting a consistent launcher off of it was insane and now her K button conversions are pretty inline with the rest of the cast.
Potemkin is arguably a top 1 now with all of the buffs and health he has. It’s like they are tuning the game for beginners rather than any kind of high level gameplay and community. And I doubt they’ve been playtesting their patches, especially at a high level. At this rate 2XKO is probably going to end up being a better game…
Opinions on each character: Sol - give him his Guard Break Fafnir back by letting him charge Fafnir for it, but at the cost of losing the benefits from his normal version. Charged Fafnir should be slow enough that it whiffs on any combo that isn't a heavy CH. Also make his 6H hard knockdown from any situation and let him special cancel off of it like the old games. Ky: Give my man some sauce already with a new Special, plz. May: She's high damage but it's fine. I'd make her more squishy in return, she should be a powerhouse, but not able to take much of a hit. Also I'd nerf her j.D recovery on whiff cause her airstalling is annoying and she's already got godlike jumping normals. Chipp: Make his 6P push the enemy away more on hit and block. He's currently overreliant on it. He can get buffs to compensate but TBH he'll get stronger as ppl discover more tether tricks. Potemkin: Make Pot Buster unable to be PRCd. If we wanna treat it as a soft reversal, then he should have the drawbacks of one as well. Also, lower the hits on his wall (3-4) and make Heavenly fly up not as high. Basically nerf his metered options. He's better in neutral now so he should feel less like he's struggling up till 50 and then becoming a terror. He'll be more balanced regardless of his meter. Nago: His damage isn't actually broken considering the circumstances. Johnny: I'd do something to reduce Mist Finer spam. Maybe give him a hurtbox on it, or make straight MF not knock away the enemy and just push them back on standing hit a bit.
HC ruined the game for like 4 years (and still does) and people still think Arcsys knows how to patch the game? lol, Anything good theyve done balance wise has been completely by luck, and has been like that for years (and multiple games)
I stopped at 12:33 If your bad enough to not only kara buster could reach round start before this, none of your comments have any weight. Your just a whiner
I hate the way that strive buffs change characters. Usually, it feels like you're sacrificing the identity of a character in order to be successful with buffing them due to how much this game favors braindead aggression.
i think the biggest issues with high health character is the meter they gain by being hit, it feels hard to discourage them from making mistakes because they're basically guaranteed meter to fight back at some point. maybe reducing the amount of meter they gain from getting hit or making burst rate slower would help
They removed Dizzy's Fire Spear loops but gave Pot back his Kara Garuda loops. They knew Pot was strong and a problematic character and they also suspected Dizzy was weak.
That's all you need to know about the amount of time they spent on the rebalance.
I'm in no position to be making balancing decisions, but there is one change i want above all others. Garuda needs to be reverted to strike, or needs to have way less frame advantage so it's not loopable on itself
Yeah garuda needs the change and back mega fist needs it’s special property for kara canceling reverted
Cuz he now he can basically have a forward mega fist but with the plus frames from back mega fist
its only loopable if its super meaty and you can backdash it at that point. anyways yeah its kinda broken no pushback with kara is kinda stupid
You're just bad, there has always been a gap unless it was meaty, and not being kgaruda not being pushed back restores the original intent of the move. On s1 guard crushes didn't get pushed back by FD, and that got changed because of Goldlewis. Garuda caught strays from Goldlewis and you forgot because you all weren't around, don't play the character, or never learned the matchup.
@@endiegaming3322 Backdashing it in the corner is death
Leaving a comment before I finish the video. A lot of the Pot rework prior to this patch didn't make sense to me.
The game instills a 5F throw invuln because every mash is 5F (or faster), but having armor on the 5th frame of Pot Buster ignores this. He already had the means of frame traps to beat fuzzy mashes, but it's now all consolidated into Pot Buster. Pot buster has to be beaten by jumps or back-dashes now, but then that opens you up to PRC OSes.
Originally the true un-mashable throw situation was achieved via Garuda GC. I'm not sure why they felt compelled to buff Garuda when Pot can already achieve similar results without it.
The karas returning is cool, but it feels like too much now.
I think the patch seems like a step in the right direction for sure, but there are still some notable outliers in terms of balance (Johnny, Zato, maybe GL) and I think they probably introduced some nonsense with Potemkin karas
as a Ram player I think the nerfs make sense and don't feel bad - I might've expected even another second or two on the sword recovery. K>Dauro was ridiculous, and the Rekka 1 loops felt silly too. Still miss Rekka 2 cancels, and I do think Calvados feels pretty strange/limited right now, but that's a minor issue.
It feels like the balancing decisions are mostly made for floor 7 meta...
lol I think this is probably closer to the truth than anything. I think strive from the outset has been focused around mid to lower level play which I'm not completely against, but at the same time I think they can still get this to a better state. I think this season update threw them off a bit and this will probably not be the last balance patch we see this season
@@adultbrianI'm mid-level and stopped playing this game mostly a while ago. They keep making decisions that make the game less and less fun. So don't stick the blame on all of us crappy players.
I think the bigger issue is they clearly haven't put enough thought or testing into their changes. All the bugs and balance issues would have been picked up with good QA. Clearly they're not doing this.
At least Strive led me to Xrd. While that game also has a ton of bullshit, at least it's done and the balance and beginner and intermediate levels is actually pretty decent and good defensive mechanics in addition to wild offense.
>"modern fully competitive esports fighting game title"
>looks inside
>overly casual-friendly patchlist
@@AdamJorgensen to each there own but I haven't noticed a patch yet in the lifetime of the game that made it noticeably worse or better. Maybe I've never been good enough to notice, maybe the characters I've played havent been as effected but I've enjoyed the entire life of strive and no patch has effected my enjoyment of playing it personally. Thats not to say I think the game is perfect or they havent made misteps but overall its the fighting game that has brought me the most enjoyment over the years. I've played xrd and accent core and still come back to strive. But thats just me and im definitely a filthy casual lol
Yea, I wouldn't be too mad with this but even then some changes don't make sense
You would think Axl would be doing amazing with big semislow characters like Potemkin, Goldlewis, Nago, and Slayer (kinda) at the top of the tierlists but no.
Pot 13:00 killed the game for me tbh
On paper he doesn't make sense...
An anti zoning Grappler that doesn't necessarily need he's command grab to do high damage, best anti airs of the game, slow but has 2 armored advancing moves that if it connects he gets access to he's best winning condition that its just spamming Garuda which they took away now the pushback so he's always in your face
And with pot buster having armor now people use it like it was a DP 💀
There is no defending the character is messed up
Who do you play?
Tf how can a single character kill the game? Plus pot isn’t even played as much and you play or played the game where you can just avoid matchups?????
@Chocolatebeeef Dude first 3 weeks of season 4 Pot was being played everywhere.
Im not going to play a Lobby that has 10 Pots, 5 Rams, 5 Goldlewis and the rest Slayers, Nagos and Sins
Its pretty much pick your poison
game fell off for me
@@dabiggestratintown I play Bedman?
I played him in Celestial and with him Pot isn't much of an issue... but beginning of Season 4 i really felt interest on Maining Dizzy in which it was just pain and seeing the state of the game i really felt like it was my time to stop playing.
Oh why not just go back to Bedman?
Well i dont want to ive already mastered the character i felt it was just time to move on to the next character that i like in which in the current state of the game i dont like anyone enough to keep playing.
@@Chocolatebeeef also interesting so you are gonna run away forever from match ups?
That doesn't sound like a good balanced game so why even keep playing?
Like i could be godlike playing but the fact that just one character can shut you down because there's so little counter play to them plus they can kill you in only 2 interactions... Even on victory doesn't feel good and at this point im not even talking about only Pot but in general any of the high health high damage characters that for me killed the game
Overall actually really happy with the patch im enjoying the game again but there's a ton of small, random things i keep seeing and im like "why??"
Like how the fuck did Nago dodge the damage nerf this patch? How did May dodge the 6P nerf last patch??
These universal changes are not so universal for the privileged characters, are they?
Nago didn't dodge the dmg nerf, they explained he lost tons of dmg with the universal changes on chip dmg with Guard Crush moves.
@jessierocket8227 that was not his biggest problem in regards to his damage imo
I went back to look, and the 6P thing is a good point.
They stated they wanted 6P *standardized* across the board. Characters with unusually fast 6P recovery got nerfed, and those with unusually slow recovery got it buffed.
But I looked back at the numbers, and Ram and May were two characters with 18f recovery on 6P. Ram's was nerfed to 23f, yet May's was left untouched.
Just a quick note, Kara Potemkin Buster could always reach at roundstart even before season 4
Yeah roundstart pot buster is a known pot meme
Yeah, the kara range now is the same as it's always been, he just has armor now. And his default range is longer. Not sure about the recovery.
@ Yes I agree, i think the armor is some kusoge type shit and he should have normal PB range decreased back to normal. I mentioned the Kara range being the same specifically because it was mentioned in the video as if it was a new broken thing Pot got in season 4, at least that’s how it came across to me.
@@StickySubstanceConsumer I'd rather they just remove the armor from PB because it's so irrelevant to Pot's gameplan but leads to so much dumb shit like Roundstarts.
@@StickySubstanceConsumerI believe SQ pointed out that PB can't be countered with single attacks on roundstart (why Ram got grabbed even after using 5k). Only very few have multiple attacks at that range like f.s of Gio and Dizzy that should be able to counteract armored PB
Pot is way too strong against zoners. No grappler should be sitting full screen doing fireballs. He completely invalidates most zoner kits/pressure/nuetral. He's probably in a good state compared to the rest of the cast, but most of his anti-zoning tools trump entire movesets of other characters. It's just dumb.
If they made his super armor vulnerable to projectiles, he'd be in a much better place imo.
There's no way he needs 5 universal anti projectile moves in his kit... Not when he's this strong, at least.
Which Zoner are you refering to? (Imo, only Axl can be called a real zoner. But I understand Dizzy, Testament and Happy Chaos can use some range pressure).
Hammer Fall is super negative on block, same for Heat Tackle. And both can be beaten by multi-hit moves. His Slide Head can be reacted since they made it slower for S4. Potemkin is very strong but he still has his drawbacks, and those can be labbed against way more easily than characters like Chipp and all their weird setups that need some execution.
@@jessierocket8227 Neither axl nor testament have multihit moves they can realistically use to beat armor, and it's by far Slide Head and Flick that are the most problematic for zoners. If the potemkin is willing to play reactively those two moves just invalidate the toolkits of the zoning characters and force them to either just sit at full screen doing nothing or approach into pot's preferred range. Since slide head also does chip damage, that means you just have to be constantly watching for it to try and dodge or iad punish. Not to mention how fucked up hammerfall break is this patch to the point where its a real reaction check on top of the old school hammerfall prc which is one of the game's strongest neutral skips.
@@jessierocket8227asuka
@@Cobalt01 Axl indeed has a very well-known multi-hit he really uses, it's his Rensen (also called Sickle Flash), it's a 3hits move, and they made it easier to use. They also added the tornado with multi-hits. They both can be Flicked, but it's to the Axl to know when to use them to reduce/negate odds to be Flicked. His Command grab from afar also catches Slide Head, but that's a risky call for Axl if not done properly.
@@Cobalt01 I forgot to answer about Testament, they have their Stain mechanic which is what makes all their move a multi-hit if they succeeded to apply Stain, so they don't have to fear armor anymore in this situation. Btw, to Flick the crow still applies Stain on Potemkin.
they definitely should have toned down some of pot's strengths because stacking them with kara is really frustrating to play against
He might not be the best character but he’s definitely the most toxic one.
Pretty upset Johnny wasnt nerfed properly. Terrible patch overall imo.
I think with Pot it's a case of listening to the playerbase a bit TOO much instead.In the previous patch they basically stated that they wanted the character to be able to succeed without relying on doing some jank kara inputs. So they removed them and buffed him in compensation. However the feedback from basically everyone (both pot players and non pot players) really questioned the changes and basically demanded he got the karas back, so they basically said "i guess people think that would be fine" and they slapped them on top.
This is Potemkin's true form and he will be like this from this point forwards. It is our time.
We suffered but it's finally time
Just nerf Pot busters damage to 50, HPB to 80 and cut his HP in half, then he can keep everything else :D
We suffered for far too long ..And I feel like i was clearly better than most of my opponents..Now these mofo’s gonna reap what they sow..zangief being good is a turn of the times ..
@silith7027 what character do you play?
ARCSYS will start listening to their fans when they introduce a normal matchmaking system instead of the cancer which is the tower system
They did it in 3v3. Why they not do this in 1v1?
I really feel like if they just adressed the health values of the higher health characters they would feel soooo much more bearable (It's not ideal but at this point i'll just take that).
I very much appreciate your point about the unfair damage changes. Millia, Faust, and Axl have to hit these big bodies like 600 times, and they still get slapped with damage nerfs? I just don't understand the thought process other than "We have to nerf all of the big ticket damage items. ALL OF THEM." but they didn't even do that, as you pointed out with Nago.
I always love how much I agree with sq cause sometimes I feel crazy or ungrateful and then she just says exactly what I'm thinking. Testament buffs are great but if you were already good at working around the hurt boxes the changes don't effect you at all and the character still loses to johnny, pot, and ram nothing really changed match ups or gameplay wise
This patch felt like it was mostly hits but then had a few really baffling misses. Why is potemkin like this? Johnny barely got touched for some reason, dizzy got her power shifted around in a way that's probably a nerf overall, potemkin, zato not even mentioned, potemkin, etc.
As a testament and dizzy player I can speak most to those characters.
Testament's grave reaper change is an odd one, because it was kinda just a thing that mattered pretty rarely. The only matchup where the opponent really had to rely on that was I-no since she has no way to contest testament 236h other than her 2h. Other than that, it seems to only really come up once or twice a set. Maybe specific players would target that extended hurtbox more but I only ever really saw it when people contested f.s > 236s on block, which was kinda stupid to exist in the first place. The stain buff is actually more impactful at least for me, since it puts less pressure on me to pop stain and force a turn and instead lets me maybe go for an extended shimmy without having to worry about stain running out before i can do anything else.
Character probably shouldn't have the disjoint if only for ino's sake, but the stain buff is nice. Solid mid tier and I'm happy with it.
For Dizzy, this character makes me sad. She's so fun to play casually, but the moment I bring her into a ft3 set I wonder why I even bothered. The opponent meter build on freeze is just too punishing, and without freeze you're locking yourself out of both oki and damage off a good chunk of her hits. I'm very disappointed that they haven't decided that's worth addressing. As far as her changes in the patch, the Chestnut change is probably one that should have happened since the loops were pretty cringe, but it left her without any really usable + frames other than 6[h]. At this point her pressure is only a bit better than axl's, but she didn't get enough power in other places to make up for the loss. The projectile kill on Chestnut is very strong for certain situations, but the knockdown it gives isn't long enough for her to set up her best oki (fish > dash jump mix) when used midscreen, so you're stuck with running up with your -ob c.s to run incredibly basic stagger pressure most of the time.
I really want to be able to play this character in tournament but I just don't feel like its worth my time.
I think the Grave Reaper change matters quite a bit. That hurtbox was the difference between getting clipped by quite a few things, purposely or accidentally.
I'm a Testament player but when I would play against Testament I would purposely snipe Grave Reapers with Beyblade because I knew just how big that hurtbox was. Most people don't know shit about Testament so it getting properly taken advantage of was rare, but it could and did happen.
I think it made doing Reaper into Reaper stronger now too. It's not a super common tactic so it would stop sign people pretty effectively, and now with the buff I saw it beat Nago trying to Beyblade between them easily. It can also clash with things it definitely would have lost to before and leave Testament at the advantage if they are ready for it.
I think it's a meaningful buff that seems less meaningful than it is because it isn't something that necessarily looks different or is going to be something that is purposely taken advantage of by a Test player because it's a very passive buff. Testament's will mostly play the same but will deff be safer doing it. No more accidentally getting clipped by a move that just happened to be active a smidge too long, whether the opponent meant it or not.
@@_Deez IDK, maybe it's just my playstyle tends to be less focused on spamming reaper in neutral than other testament players. I wouldn't even be doing reaper against nago to begin with unless he was high enough blood that he wouldn't want to clone or beyblade.
@Cobalt01 OH shit it's Cobalt. I'm in both the community and resource Discord lol. Dunno how I didn't recognize your name at first.
That's fair and it definitely was quite a risk pre patch but some people would just keep running into the projectile i noticed so I eventually just started to spam it every now and then and it would force people to change their approach. I would unironically clip Ky's trying to force Stun Dipper RC against me like 3 or 4 times cause it's all they fuckin know lol. Was it worth the risk? Probably not. But I only play in tower so it's not like I'm losing anything but the round/match.
And yeah I feel you about being conservative against Nago when he has resource. Some people just can't help themselves or just slip up and forget Fukyo Beyblade comes for all
Basically my sentiments and added a bunch of nuance I didn’t think of.
Goldlewis’ “nerfs” were laughable. I really like the idea of using defense on chaining behemoths, but it should be like Ram in the sense that his offense should have been toned down to compensate. Put his oppressive block strings and massive damage behind chaining behemoths.
Hoping they follow this one up quickly with another one to address all the remaining issues. The concept they’re going for sounds far better than the implementation so far.
This was pretty on the money. It’s exceedingly upsetting because it is highly unlikely this game will be getting another update for another 6 months and the quality of updates only seems to worsen as time passes. This was an opportunity to move things in the right direction but not only did they miss the mark, again, it only sows doubt in players that things will actually improve substantially in the future, which is not what you want 4+ years into a game’s lifespan.
I think that's what bothers me the most. Venom should probably arrive in 1-2 months (given that Unika is supposed to be in "Spring 2025") and overall I'd be ok with this patch if we already knew for sure that there's gonna be another big balance pass with Venom. But we just can't know, because they do it whenever the hell they want with seemingly no proper cadence and no communication until right before it happens. I was so ready to give them a pass if the emergency patch was kinda off the mark but it's the best they can do before Christmas. But they were SO off the mark and there was no communication that they are planning to rectify it any time soon that they are just blowing up any good will that players might have still had with them.
you miss-spoke on the guard crush change.
basically, if the move guard crushes, it deals 25% of the base damage. much more significant
I like you, Mr. RUclipsr. You speak your ideas very clearly and efficiently in a world where RUclipsrs want to stall
Thanks! I appreciate it, though my pronouns are she/her :)
@ okie doke
Excited to see the upcoming Ram video, curious to see if we're on similar wavelengths with our feelings abt the character
Pot is just... why though? They gave him obscenely strong counters to his main weaknesses, they gave him better checkmate situations (Garuda Buffs, Hammerfall change, Pot Buster buffs means more PRC OS checkmates), but then he didn't really lose anything, despite the aim of this patch supposedly being to emphasize character identity. You would think that akin to Nago, Pot's identity focuses on tradeoffs, but he's kinda just always good. You win an interaction, he's tanky, he gains meter and can now enforce a "win or win harder" situation. Fighting Pot (especially as an Asuka main) is a situation where even if the Pot plays badly, you are always one interaction away from a guess for game situation, but the reverse is very rarely true due to the health disparity and your inability to ever go for slower options due to armor and Pot's very strong distance options (can't go for much in way of projectiles due to flick, can't go for distance setup or moves like Arbiter due to Slide Head, can't go for slower air options due to HPB or HT), but if you're in his face as a zoner, you're locked out of half your tools *on your own offense* and are literally guessing for game, after winning neutral in a MU where you can't use half your neutral options and have to play reactive into RPS Jesus.
When the last few patches have had characters like Ram, Slayer, Nago, and GL be consistently strong, it feels like there's just no reason to ever play zoners, because the characters you're *meant* to counter have significantly stronger options into you than you have into them (on top of the damage and eHP difference) but then zoners are often somewhat limited into more versatile characters, so you end up in a situation where your best matchups are okay and your worst are some of the worst in the game, but the characters that your archetype ordinarily counters are instead some of your worst matchups and somehow get bigger buffs than you do each patch.
i’m really happy they want to increase the amount of interactions, i think that is exactly what the game needed. but i think the implementation is flawed. why did they disproportionately nerf certain characters. the fact that Johnny, Nago, and Goldlewis nearly got missed by this recent patch is just idiotic.
This isn’t common knowledge but each move is individually hardcoded now and some of the choices are weird. Basically 6k still doesn’t have the sliding property they took away and it’s just coded to give momentum when 6k is Kara’d. Pot buster is about the same (iirc it’s like, a pixel longer) but kara Garuda is noticeably longer. Infact, aside from slidehead and flick everything is longer than it was pre-patch (only effectively in the case of PB but still). He has a bunch of new niche Giganter pickups now cause that got increased so much it’s still sliding post flash lol.
The hammerfall/post pb animation change is the biggest buff he got honestly, real oki after command grab and super wallbreak was a huge boon for the character.
They seem to have tripled down that people need to learn and interact with Garuda RPS. Which is odd cause most people pointed that as their most disliked aspect of the character but w/e.
Ignoring the popular opinion on those balance choices, no matter how you slice it it seemed….ignorant. It wouldn’t surprise me if the reason they took away Kara’s is no one on the B-team handling the game now can do them tbh. It doesn’t feel like there’s someone great at the character doing these changes.
They need to stop hyping up new character releases and start actually touching on characters that have been in the game for years. Some of these changes are downright unacceptable.
before video: i like the direction arcs us is taking! they were very clear with their intent in the dev notes and they're clearly trying things out even if they make missteps along the way
after video: they still need to do a lot more before i pick up the game seriously again. they have a good idea of what they need to do, but they just need to hone in on doing that
The fact that Zato literally had zero changes despite being, yknow, the way he is, its ridiculous. Literally just reducing eddie cooldown would be enough. It frustrates me beyond belief that so many characters just get "fuck it" buffs and zato gets kicked further and further down the tiers, either by direct nerfs or power creep (see asuka/chaos). Like they might as well just be saying "we don't want this character to be fun" with the way they've changed him. Legit makes me sad.
You know what's even worse? Eddie has to follow projectile rules, but Faust doesn't
i mean arcsys has said before that theyd rather buff the lowtiers then nerf the toptiers and for a small patch im pretty happy with it
mosty cuz i play broken ass pot lmao but honestly i still wish theyd change him to where he got to run his offense by using your special moves to to play around your oponents bs to get a good hit instead of just walling your opponent to the corner notably revert megafist not only to get reward for it and also use kbmf in combos again and nerf hammerfall break and the speed a bit with hammerfall break currently hes really hard to push out from the corner and he feels just a little too fast for his own good make garuda a strike and honestly i think he should go back to having wwa it helps him wish problem mus but you actually need to do something right to get offense off of it where bwa kinda just feels like he throws out a giant button and now your holding guard crush 5050
I'm just glad they actually listened to a lot of feedback. Especially as a Jack-o main
I'm not sure why they thought nerfing her 2D would be a good idea but I'm glad they reverted it.
Great vid, insightful! Thanks.
Ngl, feel like I'm the only Pot main who holds this opinion. But, I didn't hate the removals of kara's. i think it made Garuda a little more obnoxious, but I never liked Guard Crush as a mechanic, so I'm sure there is a fix to that. He was simpler and partially a husk of his former self, but he was still fun. His playstyle was still what I came to him for in the first place. Not everybody liked the changes, but I think it was an OKAY change, NOT GREAT, but Okay and could've gotten better with continuous updates
I love that Kara's are back, they were always fun, but not the forefront of why I loved Potemkin.
..... this emergency patch sucked tho. I love an emergency patch where Potemkin gets back all he lost and loses NOTHING in return. He's obnoxious and I hate playing him right now cause of that.
Great video. I don’t disagree. Currently in character limbo because it feels like Bridget is just going to be the forgotten character (outside of selling merch)
I am not re learning Ram again, especially if she's so much weaker.
This patch is strange to say the least, pot players run amuk and we need a new zookeeper ASAP
as a Floor 4-5 casual Johnny enjoyer (I also play Gio, Baken and a lttle bit of Sol), I'd say I'd be totally fine with some tweaks/nerfs to him. When I watch him at high level play, I have to admit that he does look kind of unfair and unfun to fight. His 50/50's are insane. I'd never be able to block them lol!
I'm no expert on balancing a FG character tho, so what would u guys suggest?
None of us are "able" to block Johnny's 50/50 since it's unreactable (TK MF is 16 frames) and unfuzzyable . So don't worry, you're never blocking him or any other character with similar options. It's just guessing for your life
I really enjoy this version of the game except when I’m fighting Potemkin. This version of Potemkin feels insane.
yeah, a grappler who hard counters zoning. what a great idea!
the strive dev team actually has a big roulette which they spin every season to see what patches will they add
I think the first patch of Season 4 having the same level of quality as a patch that was realistically thrown together in a month to a month and a half says more about the first patch than the emergency patch my guy.
I came back to the game again for the Chipp tightrope, appreciate the amount of extra depth it gave him
The issue with potemkin its that arcsystems is trying to make im more "accesible" and pot is one of those characters who shouldnt have easy feats, i think the true power of potemkin should be locked behind a skill barrier like karas, but giving him karas and buffing his skill floor level is stupid
I actually like the direction they went, with fun mostly being the main fix of this patch. My only issue is that Pot got his kara's back and got none of the changes made to work without Kara's removed, making him giga busted.
Otherwise I like it mostly.
I feel like we do this every season, they make some dumb choices with "good intentions", we give them the benefit of the doubt and say it *overall* was a step in the right direction, and then we repeat this when they explode the meta again and we're all blocking overbuffed GL Drone.
Look man, call me a doomer, but I don't feel the game has improved as a fighter since season 2, game has wacky changes that don't feel like they serve an overall strong core fantasy other then "power" and they don't implement strong changes and systems that can counter high "power" strategies, and they don't actually fix this stuff, it's always just moved elsewhere on the roster.
Like for god sake they basically lied to us about the health changes, how do you mess that up? You're trying to increase health but are too scared to actually do it and buff a million moves to do more damage, it makes no sense, what do they ACTUALLY want this game to play like?
Sorry, I'm just tired with this nonsense, it's been years, pick it the fuck up.
Also good video, hope the game improves.
Health values in Strive has never made sense to me. In SF Zangief has the highest health at 110% of the base and Akuma has the lowest at 90%, the balance being Gief is big and slow and Akuma is a god character in every other regard. In Strive you have big bodies like Pot who are almost 20% above the median EHP and pixies like Chipp and Millia who are almost 15% below, but there's no accompanying power compensation. Chipp is just good, and Millia is downright bad.
Making a character god just because of low health is straight up toxic, like it doesn't really matter if you have "low health" if your opponent can't even touch you
Pretty disappointed in bridget. While I think to yoyo change is cool and makes the TK yoyo WAY easier, it feels like she was an afterthought.
You always do a great job of explaining your points! Even though I’m really enjoying the game in its current state, it does feel like they don’t have the resources to do what they want to do. The bugs of last patch, Rams craziness last patch and Potemkin this patch all feel like they didn’t adequately test the game. In the case of Potemkin, my guess is they knew this would be a problem, but after how last patch went they didn’t want to change too much so that they didn’t have to test quite as much. The game right now feels close so close to being amazing, but those flaws are glaring.
Happy Chaos still above and beyond #1. If you play Strive in any sort of competitive way its not even a question.
7:25 disagree completely did you watch CEO? Even top players are struggling to avoid losing 30-50 hp on chip from him on AVERAGE. Think about how this effects normal players SQ
I will mention for due diligance
Pot had Kara pot buster at roundstart already. That isn't new. Sure it has armor now but that doesn't add much when it beat most round starts already.
yeah why buff the most frustrating character in the game to fight against
Guard Crush block damage was too much of a blanket change. It really should of just been behemoth does less chip damage because other characters can't abuse guard crush on GL level. Because this change also nerfs Dizzy's H.Micheal value on it's block.
Not to mention Dizzy being both nerfed and her major problem of how gravity affects resource gain causing frozen state to build the opponent meter and burst. And chestnut being made into a strike while pot gets to keep his projectile Garuda feels so lop sided. If all this patch was adjusting numbers across the cast i think that would of been pretty good with bigger changes coming with venom. But this just seems like such a misunderstanding of why things were as they were. Like you had a team A and a Team B working on the s4 patch and the s4 hot fix.
I was expecting more changes but we take those i guess
Pot main here:
1. KPB always reached roundstart. I believe arcsys stated themselves that while range on regular PB is buffed, the range on KPB is roughly the same. Armored buster is the biggest bait in the history of fighting games. It loses to 90% of mashes it was losing before and wins 90% of interactions it already won
2. Wallbounce on 6H is horrible. Instead of being consistent tumble it can now wallbounce therefore fking up your oki.
3. Garuda being projectile only affects bad pots as Kgaruda already had momentum to completely negate FD but back then it had more chip dmg and longer guard crush + CH
4. Loosing KBM made so pot has to rely on charged input of hammerfall for most combos. It's up to you if you like it or not but I despise it
In the end pot IS stronger than he was before but he is less fun, less skillbased and more annoying to fight against. The death of my main (grinded him to top 50)
I love Pot, but you're right. Giving him karas back was excessive. Most Pot mains had already moved on and embraced the new build anyway.
🚫
Kara-buster always reached on round start
Maybe make the armor on Pot buster optional - make a command that charges the next buster as armored.
Or remove it at all - I don't care about it that much.
Best scenario: the C team working on this while thinking about New Year's 😂 Meaning... the A (and B) teams are working on brand new unannounced fighting games! 🤞🤞
Bro testament getting reduction on hurtboxes is hardly something to complain about. Test deserves more buffs if anything as they’re often boring and too much a 2-step character. Test isn’t scaring anyone. Defined weaknesses is like Ram needing to recall her swords instead of arcsys being horny about keeping them on a timer despite not changing anything hard about it this patch. Defined weaknesses is making sin eat before getting stamina. Thats what should be cared about. Along with pot being a madman...
I'm not scared of Testament or worried they are too strong. I am pointing out how these types of balance changes are not good for the game as a whole as weaknesses and counterplay create more interesting matchups. I dont agree with buffing Testament much and would rather see other characters become weaker. Even if you were to buff Testament, I'd rather it be in more interesting ways that expand the amount of options, not one that just reduces counterplay.
These types of changes happen every patch and its almost always bad. I just used this change as an example, even if it's less egregious than most.
I said it first week of her release that she feels bad 10:50 and everyone told me oh its too early to tell and look
Instead of building onto the Season 3 foundation they just threw everything in the trash, ruined several characters and overtuned others, now they made my boy Potemkin super strong, but I've lost all the trust in Arcsys so I am on a Strive break rn. The game is just in a crazy state rn, I can't take playing it seriously until it gets fixed and until a proper ranked system is added.
Kara roundstart was always a thing. Not ok with armor though
It feels very tone deaf to nerf heavily one of the top characters while barely touching the others. Also, the fact that they didn't change Zato implies they like how the character is and that's so disheartening it's almost funny. Also, going by how they treated Zato and HC so far, i'm almost wishing venom wouldn't be in the game out of fear of how he will turn out.
Ram bottom 5
Delusional take, still a top tier char
I suspect they rushed it out. It does seem like half of an idea on display.
pot damage still to high, and WHY THE FUCK DID THEY GIVE IT IT'S KARA BACK???
not to mention that testament still needs a damage buff
I started playing strive in s2 and its the first time ive seriously put in time into another fighting game besides tekken. I play both zato and devil jon ad mains. I am not pleased at all with either game rn. The easy bish boi characters are too strong woth no drawback.i wont be buying a s5 pass for ggst or for s2 tekken. My money is tight now
I think the base vision with the game is fundamentally flawed and full of ideas that ultimately don't work well in the long run which is probably why ASW are struggling to actually achieve good balance in the game.
They want it to be explosive and they also think the corner is a devil that shouldn't exist.
Honestly...maybe this is just the GG equivalent of SF5. A game that will ultimately be kinda fixed in the very end but always looked back on as a problem child.
I may be a little biased tho 😅 Strive led me to Xrd and I haven't really looked back much since 😅
so like... I play at a highish casual level. Like I'm not competing, but I do fairly well for myself on the ladder, getting celestial isn't a challenge etc etc., I know pot hasn't won any majors, but can we stop pretending he's bad now? I actually really appreciate them trying to make pot more accessible to people who can't kara, but maybe armored kara was not the answer? Also I just... don't like where ram is at. At the beginning of the season she was quite literally broken, so I didn't want to learn how to play her because I didn't want to end up relying on that. Then they "fixed" her so maybe I could start learning her for real... and now they're getting close to the same dumpster they put her in for xrd. I don't necessarily want her to be broken, but I do want her to be fun.
oh but gio got buffed? so that's neat, I play her that's my cope for this patch.
I’m all down for pot players getting their Kara’s back. But having that and armored PB, I feel like that’s a little much(amongst other things)
He was made fun of for not being a good character for a long while, he's way stronger now and seems to be taken like a real threat, like every characters should be. I don't think he suddenly is top 1, which means there is still stronger picks than he currently is
@@jessierocket8227 Pot has been a viable character for pretty much the game's entire lifespan. Grapplers have inherently polarizing gameplay and tend to be kept "weaker" overall because that's the nature of a coinflippy high-reward gameplan. Having consistently strong tools in all situations means lacking the exploitable flaws that keep that gameplan from becoming toxic.
Much appreciated.💪🏾💙
The game isn't fun. I just don't enjoy being rag dolled for 1/2 the time I am supposed to be playing. That's not a learn to play issue, the highest tournment tiers u got nnothing but examples of nobody getting to play for an entire set all over youtube. Half these characters seem blatantly unfair in respect to catching u in these combo locks.....positioning yourself makes no difference whatsoever as soon as they catch u in an attack at any distance ur just stuck facepalming looking away from the screen putting ur hands off the controller. Why is Abba allowed a dodge that she can then force u into a whiff and then combo lock u....why when i keep my distance does it make no difference and she can chain it into her jealous rage ragdoll stuff everytime....why does my punch not matter when potemkin grabs me....why anytime i try to do ram's rock the opponent immediately moves to attack and I'm helpless. HOW DO I KNOW if an attack is safe on crouch or stand when the animations aren't at all clear what the heck is being hit and from where. I don't find this fun at all. I am either bullying people in the lower floors or being bullied in the higher floors I go from floor 2 to 8 to 2 to 8 to 2 to 8 over and over. Nothing is apparent. THe solution is to buy 100$ worth of dlc and spend 100 hours testing everything so I know what is what....r u kidding me? I don't even like the inputs on this game the system is so unintuitive, u just have to memorize the timings of everything u cant go off what u see ingame. Half the time I input something it doesn't work for whatver reason. Tired of throwing an attack and it passing through the opponent cause they are in some invisible recovery status...why can't u make this visible to me the player? WOuld that be so horrible to give me indicators on where attacks hit me and when ppl r invulnerable and all that? Can I at least have it in training mode? It's not fun, I don't even enjoy watching this game anymore. The combo mode was a joke there's no combos I don't even know how u are expected to learn anything in this game the FREAKING TUTORIAL DIDN'T HAVE PERFECT BLOCKING OR PERFECT absolute defense blocking in it....I had no idea what those were turns out they have an official youtube video explaining what those are....but no mention in the ingame tutorial r u kidding me. The tutorial needs more stuff....the combo guide needs to be updated and relevant and have combos....and there needs to be community support built in so I know what the fk I am supposed to do when I need specific knowledge.
arcsys please revert the game to 3.75 thank you
I think people are really overlooking just how much the Guard Crush chip damage changes affect Nagoriyuki. He needs 3-4 blocked slashes to reach the damage one slash used to do. It's unironically a big, noticeable nerf. Part of the power budget in his reworked H normals went toward that chip, and now its essentially gone. I'm not saying the character should or shouldn't have been nerfed, but pre patch you HAD to choose between burning health to conserve meter, or burning meter to conserve health. You wouldn't risk not FD-ing a couple of them. Everyone keeps saying that he really hasn't nerfed, but if you look at a before and after, he really was. The pressure those normals put on you is effectively gone. The patch even said they acknowledge how much this will effect him and that's why they didn't really nerf him otherwise.
5H and 2H are just big, slow, minus on block pokes. Initial S4 H normals were already worse than the pre rework versions, and MUCH less fun and engaging to use, and now itself even more so. They are way, way worse than the pre S4 normals, and way less fun to use, which i think is the important part.
I wish we could just go back to before all these S4 reworks. They just aren't fun. Both to play with, and seemingly to play against.
i agree!
I’m a Testament main, so I appreciate the buffs, but I also have to say I’m not a fan of how they further nerfed Ram.
I think she’s the only character who just can’t get a semi-decent punish off a 5K or 2K now. They really needed to buff the range of her 2D so that 5K or 2K>2D at least functions at all ranges so you can get your offense started if you’re able to punish somebody with the attack. I can agree maybe 5K>Dauro was too strong, but 5K into nothing is kinda wild to me. Most characters can at least force a knockdown or a bit more of an advantage than that.
Very few characters can convert non-CH 5K into a knockdown at further ranges. Ram getting a consistent launcher off of it was insane and now her K button conversions are pretty inline with the rest of the cast.
Potemkin is arguably a top 1 now with all of the buffs and health he has. It’s like they are tuning the game for beginners rather than any kind of high level gameplay and community. And I doubt they’ve been playtesting their patches, especially at a high level.
At this rate 2XKO is probably going to end up being a better game…
I think it's pretty great, a timmy patch for sure.
if we dont get another emergency patch to tone down potemkin....
W SQ
thank you to get rid of the only thing I really liked from this Ram's version, the dauro launcher
Comment 4 algo
Oh look, more complaining from a squirrel
Opinions on each character:
Sol - give him his Guard Break Fafnir back by letting him charge Fafnir for it, but at the cost of losing the benefits from his normal version. Charged Fafnir should be slow enough that it whiffs on any combo that isn't a heavy CH.
Also make his 6H hard knockdown from any situation and let him special cancel off of it like the old games.
Ky: Give my man some sauce already with a new Special, plz.
May: She's high damage but it's fine. I'd make her more squishy in return, she should be a powerhouse, but not able to take much of a hit. Also I'd nerf her j.D recovery on whiff cause her airstalling is annoying and she's already got godlike jumping normals.
Chipp: Make his 6P push the enemy away more on hit and block. He's currently overreliant on it. He can get buffs to compensate but TBH he'll get stronger as ppl discover more tether tricks.
Potemkin: Make Pot Buster unable to be PRCd. If we wanna treat it as a soft reversal, then he should have the drawbacks of one as well.
Also, lower the hits on his wall (3-4) and make Heavenly fly up not as high.
Basically nerf his metered options. He's better in neutral now so he should feel less like he's struggling up till 50 and then becoming a terror. He'll be more balanced regardless of his meter.
Nago: His damage isn't actually broken considering the circumstances.
Johnny: I'd do something to reduce Mist Finer spam. Maybe give him a hurtbox on it, or make straight MF not knock away the enemy and just push them back on standing hit a bit.
Ram is finally perfect IMO
Axl needs his Rainwater and Rensen reverted
FREE RAM
#FreeRam
Do not
#FreeRam
just play xrd or xx if u guys keep complaining about strive
THERE IS TEN THOUSAND BEEHIVES IN YOUR FLOORBOARDS AND FLOWERS ALL OVER YOUR SKIN. PREPARE
Tbh glad i stopped playing
'cause they didnt fix zato so its bad. their direction with him is bad
HC ruined the game for like 4 years (and still does) and people still think Arcsys knows how to patch the game? lol, Anything good theyve done balance wise has been completely by luck, and has been like that for years (and multiple games)
👏 Buff 👏 Potemkin 👏 Again 👏
18 seconds
I stopped at 12:33
If your bad enough to not only kara buster could reach round start before this, none of your comments have any weight.
Your just a whiner
🦄
Nice to know strive is still buns lol
I hate the way that strive buffs change characters. Usually, it feels like you're sacrificing the identity of a character in order to be successful with buffing them due to how much this game favors braindead aggression.
so true SQoat Free Ram
#FreeRam
buff nago, nerf ram again