Hey everyone!
Sorry for the long hiatus, I'd bore you with the story but I don't think you want to hear it. I'll just get down to what this update is really about.
As of late I've stopped playing Marvel, but it was after EVO that I made the decision. I'm not exactly good at the game and I want to get much better at Soul Calibur, so I dropped practically all other fighters for it. The one exception to this was Skullgirls, but with the patch being...well...wherever it is I'm not exactly practicing that either.
This blog is also going in a slightly different direction now. I wanted to shift the focus away from fighters specifically and more towards general gaming. Because of this, and prior to this posting, I have finally started up a stream channel on Twitch, launched a Twitter account to help coordinate it, and even posted some match videos of my recent practice on my YT channel. I'll have links and embeds of all of this towards the end of this post or in a different one, but probably the latter.
Anyway! This post is to talk about Skullgirls patch changes to my main, Double, and how they may or may not have changed things up. I'll cover the ones that felt relevant so if you have something to add, please do so in the comments and I'll discuss it with you.
- Changes to Hornet Bomber: LK version invincible through first
active frame, MK version invincible up to first active frame, HK version
not invincible. All versions lose active hitbox during descent so it is
easier to hit her out of it later on. Supercancel period on landing
shortened from 30f->4f to match most other special moves. Landing
hit-stop is still supercancellable, so the change is only noticeable on
whiff.
This change was immediately noticed when I was playing at EVO. It's something I managed to adjust to over a few games though.
HK Bomber is still good as a combo ender, but outside of that there isn't a lot of use to it since it loses to pretty much everything now. As an assist (I fought a Doublecock player and went 2-18) it still functions the exact same as it did before. It's more about the spacing and punishing of the assist punish, but the active frame loss makes it much easier to go for a punish in the first place.
MK Bomber is the new HK Bomber though. Even if someone beat it there was a trade that either reset the situation or was slightly in my favor. It's pretty good as far as general use goes.
LK Bomber goes through practically everything up close. It became my go-to reversal against pressure and even beat out a couple of supers completely on reaction.
The biggest issue on cancelling to Cat Heads is on whiff now though. In my time playing I had a really hard time doing it, but I assume with practice it will get easier.
- Changes to Lv3: Sped up overall; no longer invincible for the
entire duration, invincibility now wears off after she turns into Filia;
last hit knocks the opponent away from Double; reduced damage to make
it more even with other Lv3s; recovery on block slightly longer.
The move is faster, but is only a combo ender. It is very hard to follow up afterwards, even with the proper positioning. I did get hit out of it once though, so that change is definitely noticed. Other than that it is still functionally the same, although the reduced damage isn't something I noticed.
- Changes to reduce the ease of hitconfirms: j.HP hitstun reduced by
5f, blockstun unchanged; s.MK(1) hitstun reduced; s.MK(1) and (2),
cr.MK, s.HK slowed down by 2f each.
This one hurt. You now have to confirm a j.HP into LP/LK, and even then the timing is much tighter than it used to be. The other bits of frame data haven't been too hard as I didn't notice cr.MK being hard to OTG with or anything. The changes felt largely to reduce the effectiveness of Double's neutral game.
- Remove 8f of invincibility from the middle of her dash and backdash, total invincibility 13f->5f.
The dash is still functional for crossups, but you won't be going through projectiles anymore. I spent quite a while trying to just go through one and it was nigh impossible. Overall, it is much easier to zone Double out.
- Hold Back during startup of Car to come out from the other side
of the screen. Also Furoboros back to 1/6 meter gain (up from 0), and
s.MK-2nd frame data restored (1f slower than it is now, rather than 5f
slower).
These last batch of changes came out quite recently and I'm rather happy about them. The Car change makes it possible to end combos with again. What I mean there is that the overall nerf to Double's Bomber (the bounce height specifically) made it impossible to followup with the Car unless you hadn't used your OTG. This limited Double's overall damage quite a bit, but made going for Cat Head mixups the only other option as well.
However, now that the Car can come from the other side you can easily end a combo with it, or likely punish most zoning attempts much easier.
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Well, this about covers it for patch changes that felt relevant. Again, if something else was really relevant to her that I missed please bring it up. I played around for quite a while on the patched version at EVO and even had a lengthy talk with Mike Z about the changes to Double specifically. It was really enlightening and I look forward to playing the game again when the patch does in fact drop.
I'll be posting more in the near future, so look forward to new content!
