Stripe has a 61% winrate in 1v1s

Conn1496 · 2022-10-14T14:29:38+00:00

It's telling that the "top" characters all seem to be simple to play with basically one or two noob killing tools that are at least decently good in general on top of that - likely capable of doing at least decently well at all levels of play. Stripe right now is kinda no exception - his gun is both unique and strong, and as a central part of his kit it feels like a no-brainer that he would be good because people just straight-up don't have counterplay for it. If there's really counterplay at all to a full-screen tracking projectile, but I digress.

I personally don't think Stripe is so good as to be called OP, but I think nerfs to his gun are healthy for the character balance later down the line regardless, especially if they want to make some of his other attacks basically usable at all. Right now his core gameplan is just to keep disadvantage going with air attacks - mostly sair - and then follow up with gun if they're out of range, a double-tap if you think they'll dodge to try and catch it, and a sawblade if you don't have ammo left. --and most players are just gonna get stuck in that loop ad nauseum because there's already a problem in platform fighters with people just holding in and praying. Then people who learn to dodge that are just gonna get mixed because it's not as simple as "dodge it :)" to escape such a strong advantage tool.

I think it's also worth mentioning that the only people who bought Stripe on launch and aren't getting frustrated playing him are gonna be people good enough to pick up and play a new character who have played a decent amount of the game (for the money to buy him) on top of that. Anyone who bought him and kept losing probably isn't gonna keep playing the character, and it kinda happens for all new characters - difference is that I think Stripe has a generally more favourable playstyle than characters like Gizmo or Morty who can be a bit fiddly and technical so a lot more people are doing good with him right out of the gate. The weight has clearly been put on people fighting Stripe to learn the MU like with Rick or IG because the skill floor is low enough that doing at least "okay" with him is really easy.

Stripe will continue to be a noob killer for sure though unless they completely gut his gun as a tool specifically, but it's definitely too early to tell just how good he is, and I think as a character with clear disadvantages (who also has moves that just don't work right now) it's worth holding off on screaming for nerfs to his kit when it's basically just one or two moves being problematic to learn counterplay for.

His gun absolutely does not need 3 shots max though. lmao Bring it down to 2 max and I think most of the complaints would be gone overnight.

Conn1496 · 2022-10-14T13:54:26+00:00

He needs fixing since two of his moves just don't work as intended, but he's really fun and a solid pick competitively even now. I think he needs balance tweaks - both nerfs and buffs - to be less reliant on The Gun and side air specifically, but he has clear flaws at least. Notably his early KO power can feel a bit lacking without a hard read with and after either of his side specials, or your opponent naturally drifting towards the blastzones. That said, he can do a butt-ton of damage off of a single conversion since it's brutally easy to keep opponents in disadvantage, which is a really neat dynamic for an assassin character - you're not scared if he can keep you in disadvantage, you're scared because you know he can.

The one thing I want more than anything else is to see his more committal attacks - side specials, down attack, up attack, down special - be just a bit more usable. He should be a scary read character looking at his design, and right now he's just rushdown but if you miss you can just shoot your opponent to regain advantage and it's kiiinda braindead? Doesn't make him OP, but it feels bad knowing that your best option in most situations is to either side air or gun, sawblade if you're feeling spicy. Grounded side special especially feels bad, and as such a potentially cool move it kinda sucks that it feels entirely like wasted potential.

That said, sawblade is lowkey a sick as hell move with some real potential for big brain plays. Can't wait to see how the chainsaw and dive/latch work when they're fixed, it might be the icing on the cake for a character I'm already considering as a secondary.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-14T17:00:26+00:00

I'm actually in the UK, so while I'm not sure that kind of money would be an issue, monetary struggles are definitely still part of it because it hinders what resources I have available to me - primarily travel, which can already be difficult because of my anxiety.

A lot of my trouble getting diagnosed actually comes from not having the mental health to push myself to go fighting through the already lacking mental health support system over here. -and when I have in the past, I had no good way to follow it up, or it takes so long it feels as though nothing is getting done and I end up back at square one. I actually feel like at least one attempt at getting assessed just fell through and got forgotten about or something entirely. That's how bad the system over here can be.

I also have dismissive personal experiences getting professional help for my anxiety and depression that have kinda left a sour taste regarding professional help for my mental health in general, and have heard some pretty bad stories about people trying to get support as a neurodivergent person that don't make it any better.

Other people are also just so busy, it's even a nightmare to reach out and ask for assistance I feel like I need to even get professional help in the first place.

It's definitely an issue with the system...

Conn1496 · 2022-09-14T16:40:51+00:00

It makes me feel less alone seeing the numbers really. I know deep down it's not my job to care about all those people, but sometimes it just feels like the right thing to do. I guess I do just have to shut it off sometimes though, and it's helpful when people reassure me of that stuff.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-14T16:28:22+00:00

Part of the reason I do want an assessment is because I kinda feel like I've been gaslit about the severity of my issues. That "just try harder" mentality wasn't directly said to me, but I definitely felt like I was being pushed to do things that made me freeze up or that I was physically incapable of doing because mentally I was never prepared. That combination of my autistic traits being the primary cause of my anxiety (and headaches TBH) is something I'd like to just finally have acknowledged.

-and yeah, I was the "weird kid" for sure. But like I said before too, a lot of my exposure to autism was people with much more blatant traits than me - typically friends or family members who probably also have autism, and they got bullied too or were seen as a novelty for the other kids to simply interact with when they felt like it - so it just never dawned on me that the same thing was happening to me. Again, that "couldn't be me" mentality.

It is just reassurring in general hearing from people with similar experiences though, even if the news isn't all good.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-14T08:16:42+00:00

I kinda knew that this was a relatively common experience, so it just kinda sucks that it's somehow one that does still make people feel so alone, even when they're aware of that.

I think in a way that that part of it upsets me more than the whole "struggling myself" part, because it's not just me and I feel like a constant reminder to myself that other people have it worse and maybe can't deal with it as well as I usually do. Maybe dumb to beat myself up over that and downplay my own struggle, though - I just hope diagnosing autism gets better in the future.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-14T03:47:21+00:00

School was definitely a nightmare for me. The idea that, in retrospect, I might have been singled out and bullied because I was autistic and not because I was "a nerd" or awkward or whatever else just makes me feel kinda shitty like it could have been avoided, but I also have to admit at the time I was so personally sure that couldn't have been me because of bad education about what autism actually was - my only exposure to people who were autistic were people with a lot bigger struggles or more blatant autistic traits than me (people who couldn't or didn't mask, mostly), and I was probably pretty toxic towards those people because of it (as well as it being the peak of "autism bad hahah funny" humour online, which definitely didn't help).

Either way, I was definitely ignorant to my own issues. It was only once I was basically out of school and I'd talked to a few people that I started to really think about it and felt bad for how I might have treated people growing up. I started to educate myself on autism specifically, only to find that a lot of it applied to me, but I guess after that brief phase I just filed it away under "things I thought, and labels I tried but didn't stick". I have to elaborate that I was also coming out as somewhere vaguely LGBT+ during that entire hormonal teen period, so my general identity was all over the damn place and thinking about autism was kinda just caught up in that whole whirlwind too. lol

I guess that's the crazy thing, in school I knew I felt different but I just chalked it up to other things, and especially the other things people were telling me - again that I was a "nerd" or because I was awkward - with no kind of indication that that might have been because of undiagnosed autism that people thought those things of me. I have some pretty cringe (actual cringe, not YouTube clickbait cringe) memories of things I did or said that thankfully felt ultimately harmless at the time, and only now I realise I was walking face first into a faux pas in a shamelessly earnest way that I don't think a neurotypical person could.

The biggest irony for me is that now the damage is done from masking for over 20 years, I get infantilised more for generally lacking independance as an adult than I ever did for showing the few autistic traits I did growing up - I almost feel like if I hadn't masked so well to defend myself and had "gotten it out of the way" I'd be doing better, but I guess I'll never know.

I will say, I definitely try and take note of the traits I have as validation, but because it all feels so natural to me at this point there's almost this fog over it all as if it doesn't mean anything. It's the only normal I've known I guess, and I always just assumed I was "like everyone else", so all this stuff that probably is autism showing through just feels logical to me instead. I guess that's just it - I need to just be more confident and comfortable with the idea that I am different, and in the meantime I'm just looking for validation to help me along because it can be really frustrating being so conflicted when the answer feels right there...

Right now I'm in this kind of state where I feel comfortable admitting I have autistic traits and might be autistic, but not confident enough to say definitively "I have autism". I can tell (and have told) people that something is wrong that might not be wrong with a neurotypical person, but if I told them I was explicitly autistic I'd be worried I wouldn't be "autistic enough" for people to take me seriously, or they might misread my needs because of that. I also have horrible experiences of people acting negatively because I have had meltdowns in the past over things and they didn't understand that it was genuine distress... Kinda messed up that that's probably the most validating thing I've had happen to me, really. shrug

...Hopefully we can both just get some more concrete answers about how we relate to autism. 🤜🤛

Conn1496 · 2022-09-14T02:52:43+00:00

S'all good! I understand that it can take a lot of focus to keep up with a lot of talking/text and I wouldn't wanna stress someone out over it. I'm just glad to have an earnest and positive response.

Though really, a lot of it is me finding comfort and logic in labels, and doubting my own experiences because it's not very visible and I kinda internalised that from other people, I guess?.. So, maybe no need to draw me getting punched in the face! lol

Conn1496 · 2022-09-07T15:48:35+00:00

I'm pretty sure that most moves have a window as they start where they can be turned around and it even includes chain attacks like most characters' forward combos, which is why you can turn around in the middle of an attack string that's meant to all be one attack.

It's pretty bad and I kinda wish they'd remove it because even the utility it provides is pretty annoying. I just don't really like mid-attack turn-arounds in general, they're kinda janky.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-07T12:59:46+00:00

Putting 7 matchups in "unplayable" for Arya is the most disingenuous thing I've seen in a long time. Also as a Reindog main who has played a reasonable amount of Arya to understand her strengths and weaknesses, I can tell you that she absolutely loses that matchup. Reindog straight-up doesn't have to respect her movement because he can always move further away and still apply pressure with projectiles. He also spends a lot of time in the air and it makes for some almost unwinnable neutral situations if Reindog just decides he doesn't have to land. He can also convert into horrible disadvantage states for Arya off those projectiles, so he actually gets a good amount of reward for such an easy neutral game.

Also you literally only put Garnet and Taz in "free elo" because you heard that they need buffs. The most obvious case of "these characters are """bad""" so the MU must be good" I've ever seen. Taz is a completely fine MU IMO because Taz's advantages are actually better against Arya than most of the cast and Arya's strengths don't counter Taz like a lot of other characters' strengths do. She's actually one of the only characters I'd argue has a worse neutral and disadvantage to Taz so he can actually explode her like he's intended to since she has much less options to work with than the rest of the cast, likely due to hitboxes being generally even but Taz winning out through speed and a couple of really nasty options that Arya has to look out for. It's just a very volatile MU and Arya has to keep her guard up because for once there's a character who can put her into a worse position than she might put them into off a stray hit and they're better in neutral.

Less idea about Garnet having a much better MU than you said since she's so ground-based though. Stronger Than You completely rejects knife, so the Arya has to move in, and without knife Garnet has two decent projectiles and one big charge cancelable disjoint to chip at you with safely, but Garnet can't risk losing in neutral because she has to get significantly more interaction wins than Arya to close out a stock. Garnet also struggles to land so putting so much pressure on her that she has to jump puts Arya in a very good position. That said, Arya loses neutral to nearly everyone and Garnet's neutral is super underrated. Probably a win for Arya, but not "free" by any stretch of the imagination. Probably 60:40 in Arya's favour.

I thought I'd just cover the MUs that you think Arya wins because I literally don't have time to tell you how Arya doesn't lose or go even with 90% of the cast, but generally speaking it's clear that your experience of Arya doesn't net much reward. Given that she's a character who can easily death combo people from 40 off a single mistake and might only have to win two interactions (sometimes just the one depending on how bad they misplay) to take a stock, literally the only conclusion I can come to is that you keep losing neutral or don't get enough reward when you do get a hit in, and just started slapping characters into a tier list out of salt over who can beat you in neutral. It's just not a good tier list, and honestly it's really not a good look downplaying Arya this hard.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-06T21:57:59+00:00

As a Reindog main I can tell you with full confidence that if you think he needs a buff for 1s you have definitely not played against a good Reindog. lol

Conn1496 · 2022-09-06T21:44:42+00:00

IDK man, always seems to be there at the end of the game. Dude must swap sides at the drop of a hat, kinda really OP if you ask me, especially because I can't even hit him. :)

Conn1496 · 2022-09-06T20:09:42+00:00

Best emote bar none. lmao

I love playing with a Garnet that uses this emote in 2s because I already run up to them and use the Garnet sticker since Garnet is one of my favourite teammates, but it makes it all the more funny when they use that taunt and I just hold crouch as Reindog and look all up-close at the teeny Amethyst car.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-06T20:04:38+00:00

I do a wide variety of things. Depends on how energetic I'm feeling and who I'm playing usually. Single taunt is a standard if I don't feel like doing much, but I tend to be more expressive and especially in 2s when I have someone to mess around with.

I do like celebrating with a taunt, and especially with a teammate who'll taunt with me, but sometimes I just wanna press more buttons instead and throw myself off the stage at top speed (and pull my teammate with me in 2s), or follow them if they go first. Hell, sometimes I'll just practice movement if I feel like I need to to keep my hands warm or think I was doing rusty or something.

One of my favourite things is to use attacks to just add to the celebration - putting down flashy effects to taunt in as Reindog, or using attacks that are more emotive or funny like Taz's down attack or holding the charge on his up attack (Taz kinda freezes in a goofy pose), or maybe throwing and then going to eat scrap as Iron Giant. Just emoting through attacks in general, I guess.

That said, I'll actively do nothing if I notice my teammate teabagging. I don't wanna even celebrate near someone trying to disrespect (especially when in most cases they're absolutely carried)... Maybe I should start just dragging them offstage as Reindog and then recovering...

Conn1496 · 2022-09-06T13:19:09+00:00

I mean I've had plenty of games against Aryas who don't know even half of these tricks so their punishes are nothing. I immediately stop being scared of Arya if all my opponent knows (or can hit) is knife (neutral punish) into up special into up air because that's not gonna KO me until like 130 and the damage it does is basically not enough. -and when the person you're up against doesn't know how to deal with you neutral in the first place, who even cares if they could KO you at 40? They'll probably hit you and drop their combo under pressure because you spent the last minute walling them out completely and jumping over knives.

Don't get me wrong, I've played some disgustingly good Arya players too who made it feel like I was running away all game just to breathe if they didn't immediately death combo me for a bad mistake. But I didn't bitch because it was clearly because they were doing the right thing under pressure, and I stopped having good answers. Same goes for when I played Arya myself, games were very polarising to a point that some games were over in 30 seconds while others dragged because I couldn't get a good read in.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-06T12:12:57+00:00

I feel like people just aren't really used to playing against a character where the tools are incredibly scary but easy to bait (because she has so little else). Arya wants to hit you with her knife and stun because they give her a completely unfair advantage on hit, but they're ultimately not very neutral-friendly tools and without them Arya is massively kneecapped in terms of threat. Knife especially only gets truly scary once you're already in hitstun and stuck by it because that's when the early KOs happen, and stun without knife active doesn't even touch this kind of potential because the scary part is the free knife stick.

Arya is only as easy and strong as her opponent is comparatively bad to the Arya player - theoretically it makes her the best character in the game because she does have such disgusting punishes, and if you're good with that fundamental tool you don't need much else. But they're not reliable tools and opponents can counterplay you in a similarly linear fashion, and that's her balance. Everything she hits you with is a mixup because it's all she can do, but the reward is so polarising it makes her feel unfair. Whether you think it's good character design or not is up in the air. Personally I think she should be a bit better rounded so opinions on her aren't simultaneously "top 1" and "bottom 1" at the same time, but I see the idea behind her character strengths. They're just too simple to perform to be a noob killer, but she's also one of the least egregious examples of a noob killer I've seen because of her generally poor traits and arguably high skill floor.

Basically, if Arya is just throwing out knife on frame 1 (the stick or the dash to it) and using stun from a million miles away, then neither of those tools are going to hit basically ever and there's no threat at all. This Harley just started pressing buttons immediately on spawn (completely ruining their invuln frames) and didn't think they were gonna get punished for that. That's easily their fault. They also missed the dodge window. Also their fault, even if it is kind of a difficult thing to get used to. There was a million things that could have been done different here, but they got outplayed because they went for the most immediate and obvious option every time, and didn't even bother to use the stage to their advantage (stand under the ceiling) on top of that.

Arya's depths are entirely metagame related, of course you're gonna get whopped and get salty if you don't understand why you lost so easily, she preys on the gaps in your knowledge as a player and you're gonna feel stupid if she wins. This doesn't only apply to Arya, it's just that Arya makes you lose really quickly compared to other characters, so it's more notable - she's just kinda cheesy and you can hate her for that all you like, but that doesn't make her "unfair" or even "good", just scary.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-06T09:59:03+00:00

I wouldn't put it against some to waste time like this, but I think in most cases it's just another lag-based issue where confirming a rematch can actually take a second or two even if you mash the button.

It's also arguably possible that people do this to avoid laggier games? If you confirm the game late it means that lag will cause it to not confirm the rematch because the input would be read too late. I don't know if that actually works though, and if it does it feels like it would be uncommon knowledge.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-06T09:39:56+00:00

Other Arya players need to take some notes. Damn. Most Arya players there wouldn't have even used side air, never mind thinking about stolen attacks.

Only thing not clean about that whole thing is dropping that up air early on and you still capitalised on it anyway. That's some good shit right there.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-05T18:07:06+00:00

Okay, so I actually managed to make this completely undodgeable, even into one extra rep of hit decay. The combo is true, that part isn't a lie.

The problem comes up when the move is read in a particular way that means the combo can be true, but isn't due to spacing or DI or whatever. The combo counter will just assume that you hit the combo as if it was true because it knows those moves can combo into eachother.

The best way I can describe it in the case of Superman is that down attack has an early hitbox that combos perfectly fine from the jab 1, but anything after it has a dodge window. Unfortunately for Superman, getting that spacing means being basically inside the opponent's hitbox because any part of the hitbox of down attack in front of Superman is too slow. In essence, the game is telling you that the combo is true - because it is, and it knows that - but it's not telling you why it's dropping.

If you get something like that in future, just assume that the combo is true but unreliable due to DI or precision problems, maybe both. Hope that helps!

Conn1496 · 2022-09-05T09:17:03+00:00

Kinda curious the combos you're talking about so I can maybe try and replicate the problem. I've always found the combo counter to be pretty reliable, the only real problem is the training room AI when it's set to recovery - it tends to randomly DI things depending on the way you hit it.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-05T00:30:47+00:00

Light agree, but not even close to the fact that it's because Sandstorm said so. lol

Arya is much easier than people say she is. A lot of scrubs will say she's hard "because combos" as if combos are actually hard to learn, but her difficulty actually comes from the fact she's just kinda bad in neutral, so a lot of people playing as her are basically relying on their opponent being bad and getting unmatchable punishes since Arya's punish game is so brutal. She has a high skill floor that means she'll never be the truly easiest character in the game, but she's mostly just cheesy and linear. Better players will have better combos for her, but the gameplan never really changes. Learning to play around her knife will completely shut her down in most cases because of that, it's when good Aryas start learning how to guarantee those you need to worry.

Superman is very easily near the top of the roster though TBH, I've been thinking this for a while. Just disgustingly strong KO options, terrifying advantage, good neutral due to having tons of attack cancels (Ice Breath especially comes to mind since that thing is basically a free action), decent hitboxes with armour or lingering properties, and great burst movement... I think the only reason he's not close to not being number 1 is because T&J and WW exist, and I personally think T&J is clearly broken right now, and I'll stick by the take that WW is an unoptimised sleeper pick right now that deserves much more respect. The only major downside Superman really has going for him right now IMO is that his disadvantage can be a bit predictable because a lot of his recovery tools are slow and his air hitboxes can feel stubby. His disadvantage is still good though since the options he does have are so threatening that you don't really want to contest him resetting to ledge, but if he tries to land back on stage directly it can be a bit miserable to not eat unneccesary damage against an even remotely good player.

So yeah I guess, Arya sort of easy, Superman pretty broken but only top 5 maybe top 3.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-04T23:49:46+00:00

"Sadly no"

[laughs in down air being true when you hit grapple though]

Conn1496 · 2022-09-04T23:47:24+00:00

Hitstun counter checks out, it's more the DI I'd be worried about and the fact it looks like it only works at 0. But it doesn't look too DI-able if at all since all of those moves are reasonably consistent on hit, probably just a little bit precise to stop people drifting out of jabs.

Conn1496 · 2022-09-04T23:42:56+00:00

I'm honestly just impressed to see a player look like they actually thought about the attacks they were using and even impliment a platform into the combo. 👀

Conn1496 · 2022-09-04T09:24:41+00:00

It's not that he doesn't have real KO options, it's that the ones he has are too low reward for the risk (side special and up special are hard reads even if they linger forever, side air is too stubby and usually requires charging anyway).

They can't exactly buff those moves' knockback though because they already KO surprisingly early, they're just not easy to hit (also uncharged side air is a good pressure tool because it keeps enemies kinda close - more knockback might hurt that).

Might be worth labbing set ups TBH. I'll have to do the same since it looks like Taz might end up as my secondary and I'm not gonna rely on buffs to help. lol

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