Small changes to the Wu-lin | Forums

[Knight_Raime]

Since i'm kinda tired of arguing about CCU and other tired topics I wanted to make a thread about something else. The Wu-lin are criminally underrated and practically ignored by both the devs and the community alike. Yet they're my favorite faction. I could rant about this but i'd rather do something short and sweet. So i'm going to suggest a few changes for each wu-lin hero that would round them out a bit better and (in theory,) should be low effort/budget to introduce for the devs.


Nuxia:

-Deflect heavy input now does a heavy finisher. Can be feinted/soft feinted into trap.
-Heavy finishers throw direction can now be controlled.
-Improve trajectory of chain heavies so they're more likely to catch people who auto dodge out of light openers.


Jang Jun:

-Reduce the Stamina cost of heavies.
-Reduce the knock back of his zone parry so feint into GB will not whiff.
-Improve the forward range and tracking of kick.


Tiandi:

-Massively increase the range of side dodge lights.
-Palm strike in combo is now 500ms.
-Can recovery cancel dodge out of finishers.


Shaolin:

-Neutral dodge heavies now are chain starters.
-Fixed feint window on unblockable after kick.
-Fixed recoveries for all Qi heavies on hit and block.
-Light after kick is now Frame advantaged.


Zhanhu:

-All recovery cancels are now 200ms.
-Side dodge attacks now have a variable window of 200-400ms (up from 300ms to 400ms.)
-Chain finisher lights are now 500ms. Chain finisher heavy link in time is now 200ms from 300ms.


Explanations:

Nuxia has the unique ability to change the direction of her deflect input. The intent I believe is to try and trick people since it is indeed blockable. However since she cannot do anything else from a deflect it doesn't really trick people since blocking is not difficult to begin with. Giving her a heavy finisher deflect input not only plays into that and her general game of feints/traps but it also lets her finishers see more time which is good due to their unique behavior. Throw direction is a QoL thing that really should've existed to begin with. Asking the Nuxia to not only choose the right direction for a throw that will do something for her is a big ask. let alone making it actually land in the first place.

JJ's changes are probably the smallest of the bunch. Essentially the changes are all just QoL that allow him to do what he's already doing but better. Tiandi changes aim to do much in the same. But with the minor change of allowing recovery cancels on finishers to make his dodge attacks much more viable than just "do from neutral or after feint."

Shaolin's changes are a bit more intensive because he has too much of a start and stop nature to his kit that really ruins the flow of his kit. It's far too hard to get going with Shaolin and the payout doesn't seem fitting when he gets thrown back into that state far too frequently. FA being on the light after his kick aims to actually make his kick threatening again instead of people just eating the kick because it's actually a worse situation to try and avoid it. (zhanhu has a similar problem too.)

Finally we come to Zhanhu. Recovery cancels make him the actual king of doing so which was kind of the whole point of his design to begin with. Current values vary which limits what is and isn't actually viable. All of his "good" mix ups or attacks even in this sandbox risk a lot since they're lights with no special properties. The cancel recovery on top of the fixed 400ms of his dodge attacks makes it insanely easy to GB him mid dodge which sort of puts a wrinkle into the thing he's supposed to be doing. So the recovery changes and increased variable input aim to fix that problem. They'd still reward light parries and are still FD because "balance." So it in no way would make him remotely OP.

The final change is a much bigger topic and is one of many issues spawned with slapping FD onto basic 500ms lights. Essentially speaking if your mix up has a slow unblockable it's VERY vulnerable to buffered 500ms light interrupts if you lead into it via lights since most lights impart light hitstun. How slow are we talking? Well I need to throw some numbers at you.

after being hit by a light it takes 600ms for you to throw out an attack. If you buffer your attack during hitstun your attack will land 1100ms after being hit. (500ms attack+ 600ms after being hit to start your attack.) Every attack has what is called a chain link in time. Or essentially how long time passes after the hit lands before you see the indicator of the next attack. A vast majority of attacks have a 200ms link in time but some have 300ms. So lets apply this knowledge for an example with Zhanhu.

Zhanhu's unblockable heavy finishers are 900ms with a 300ms chain link in time. This means from landing any light attack he uses it will take 1200ms for that unblockable heavy to land. Now remember back to my previous statement of a buffered light. That buffered light will land 1100ms after being thrown. This means that Zhanhu's unblockable mix up always loses to a buffered 500ms attack. If we Bump that chain link in time down from 300ms to 200ms it's now 1100ms. Which means Zhanhu will trade with a buffered quick attack. Which would be in his favor due to damage trading. But since it's a trade both are now frame neutral. And this assumes he's trading with just a bog standard light.

The situation can be worse if the person is using a quick dodge attack because they will likely avoid it via I frames. What about feinting to GB? The buffered light will interrupt this. Feint to parry? TECHNICALLY doable. But it's a very hard read since feints have their own recovery time before you can input them. Someone like Kensei actually can't feint to parry because of how slow his unblockable actually is. (1200ms by default without considering chain link in time.) What about unblockable light finisher instead? Well it's 600ms. That plus 300ms makes it land 900ms after a light. Which means you would beat the buffered light. But this is poor for Zhanhu anyway because it's relatively low damage even for a finisher, it's 600ms which is still plenty reactable even with the CCU changes. And even if it lands it puts Zhanhu in FD. And because his neutral game is so poor it's generally not worth going for.


Here is a quick video showcasing what I talked about in visual format showcasing a few different unblockable situations:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitive...need_to_speed/

Bottom line is we can solve this issue by changing link in times and speeding up certain unblockables. But the issue of other offense in general still exists because FD is slapped on nearly every light out there. So it's only a stop gap fix to a larger problem. But yeah rant aside these are the changes that i'd make to start making the faction more relevant in game again. None of them would truly be fixed. But it would be an excellent start. Ty for reading.

[Goat_of_Vermund]

I agree with the Nuxia ones, I don't play the others.

Also, JJ's bs move when he kills you for succesfully parrying you once needs extremely heavy nerfs.

[Knight_Raime]

I agree with the Nuxia ones, I don't play the others.

Also, JJ's bs move when he kills you for succesfully parrying you once needs extremely heavy nerfs.

Can you elaborate on the jj thing?

[Goat_of_Vermund]

Can you elaborate on the jj thing?

I meant the choke. : ) It still removes far too much stamina into two heavy attacks, and he will still have time one more 50/50.

[Knight_Raime]

I meant the choke. : ) It still removes far too much stamina into two heavy attacks, and he will still have time one more 50/50.

Oh okay I was confused. Yeah the choke stamina damage needs a nerf. But they also need to return his smack to floor people if it puts them oos ):<

[MrGrippz]

The smack after the choke still floors ppl if they become OOS. I am like 98% sure of this.

I have a rep 65 JJ & i never had an issue with his heavy mixup using a light after feinting the unblockable finisher. Do you mean the heavy hit back puts them out of range to feint UB finisher into guard break? Cuz there I would agree.

I also agree with the Zhanhu changes. I would add to normalize his dodge attack parry punish. If i do a side dodge heavy as Zhanhu & i get parried it should give them a free heavy. Dodge heavy parry should give light, dodge light parry should give heavy, just like all other chars.

[MrGrippz]

One thing i forgot too is Zhanhu's unblockable finisher from the right is angled waaayyy too high. It does not track or hit as well as the much lower angled left UB finisher. Makes no sense & makes the right atk much less effective.

[Knight_Raime]

The smack after the choke still floors ppl if they become OOS. I am like 98% sure of this.

I have a rep 65 JJ & i never had an issue with his heavy mixup using a light after feinting the unblockable finisher. Do you mean the heavy hit back puts them out of range to feint UB finisher into guard break? Cuz there I would agree.

I also agree with the Zhanhu changes. I would add to normalize his dodge attack parry punish. If i do a side dodge heavy as Zhanhu & i get parried it should give them a free heavy. Dodge heavy parry should give light, dodge light parry should give heavy, just like all other chars.

Let me try to elaborate. If the choke portion OOSes someone they will be floored after the smack. This is how things were. The smack happens to do some stamina damage. If the smack is what put someone OOS they wouldn't fall. However at some point they either on purpose or accident made the person be floored if the smack is what put them into the OOS state. At current I think this was reverted and i'd like that back. And yes sorry what I meant was JJ's heavies hitstun/block stun would shove someone out of feint into GB range. However I recently came to find out this was fixed likely when Gryphon dropped as they use similar animations and now neither him nor JJ have this issue. (however JJ's parry into zone still suffers from this and needs fixing. I will edit the post to reflect this.)

As far as I understand if they parry any of zhanhu's dodge attacks it always rewards them with a heavy because the game considers them lights. Are you saying you want the heavy input to be treated as a heavy besides just it's execution potential?

One thing i forgot too is Zhanhu's unblockable finisher from the right is angled waaayyy too high. It does not track or hit as well as the much lower angled left UB finisher. Makes no sense & makes the right atk much less effective.

Zhanhu does have some hitbox/trajectory odities. I decided to omit them at the moment to not overload the amount of changes being asked. But those should definitely be addressed at some point.

[MCBooma16]

I like the proposals. Giving Nuxia more utility on a deflect seems rather cool and probably necessary in my opinion. She has weapons capable of trapping the opponent, it would be great if her deflect had the utility of doing just that. Nuxia ought to have the option of going for a quick, guarenteed light deflect, but she should also have the option of going for a heavy deflect like Orochi, but able to be soft feinted to a trap like what the zone sf does for more damage.

Being able to throw players anywhere you want with finishing heavies sounds neat. I suppose the throw timing could be similar to Glad's after he gets his skewer.

I like the proposals for JJ. Tiandi's are good, too.

Shaolin is tricky, though. Personally, I don't mind how his flow functions, but now that I think about it, that's the biggest reason he's not picked for any competitive bouts.

Dodge heavies acting as chain starters sounds interesting. His dodge attack has decent I frames and you can delay the timing just a tad. I feel it would be too much pressure, though, since he'd also be able to flow right to Qi stance. I digress, though: being able to flow to Qi stance from a dodge attack would be akin to Gryphon flowing to his kick after a dodge. Good proposal.

I always kinda thought Shaolin should be able to flow to Qi stance on heavy finishers too, but then the animations would need to be changed and that would be a different type of "relentless" pressure.

I agree that the UB after kick always felt weird. Always feels like it feints really late or something, but I just ignored it.
As for his Qi heavy recoveries, I think they're fine unless I'm missing something. I can still keep up solid pressure after they land.
As for the light after kick, I thought it already had frame advantage. I thought that was his one move that was an exception to the CCU frame advantage/disadvatage rule.
Oh, and his deflect damage sucks. I wish it was the same as his neutral heavy like it was before the damage changes.



I like the Zhanhu proposals. However, I think he needs quite a bit more to really make him a dodge specialist, let me reiterate. He needs to be able to dodge-cancel out of his neutral heavies as well. I feel this would really work well with your variable-timed dodge window proposal. Standardized timings for dodge cancels would be helpful. A faster light finisher would be great, because I can still react to it on console. His flow needs to feel less clunky when attempting to keep in an infinite chain going. Right now it feels, uh, clunky.

Thanks for sharing, hopefully we see some changes geared toward the Wu-Lin in the future.

[King_of_Xibalba]

lol I only like zhanhu and after the European dominion series , when the nuxia girl clutched and win over the entire enemy team, I think I will buy nuxia.
I agree whith zhan hu sugestions.
Not related to the technical issues of the faction, but I want to know why this faction is your favorite (from the lore or narrative point of view, or even just fashion or whatever)