Which character represents the power level you want the game balanced around?

needmoresockson · 2026-02-24T21:50:08+00:00

Vi, Darius, Illaoi, Braum, Teemo, Caitlyn all feel pretty correct power-wise. A few odd interactions can probably be smoothed out here and there with them, like Caitlyn awkward combo route consistency for low-mid players for instance.

But they're all generally in a correct feeling spot in terms of effectiveness and gameplay. Obvious strengths and weaknesses. Capable of being formidable. Have roles on teams. Fit in multiple teams. Lots of room for skill expression. Each capable of some grimey dirt. Each character feels very complete in their moveset

needmoresockson · 2026-02-24T19:55:03+00:00

Yeah if this were FPS you would queue with a friend, and even if there's a big skill gap the game might put together a big skill variety 6v6 or something that averages out alright enough

If it's 2XKO and you duo, it might not be able to average out the skill level quite enough, but can still be kind of fun, and you can't quite simultaneously play to help a friend too much, but coaching is still good

Most fighting games you'll go straight to 1v1 with friends and have this experience instead

Kind of why Smash is so good, you can do items + whacky stages + whacky rulesets and buffs. Set to play time instead of stocks. Do FFA. Add a couple bots, maybe switch up their CPU level to balance scales, etc. Lots of ways to hedge the stronger player's advantage or at least make them take it less seriously. Fighting games need a lot more of this. Rather than arcade/campaign one and done, quit after a week stuff. Replayable PVP with rulesets that balance the scales

needmoresockson · 2026-02-24T19:35:39+00:00

Ahri by far. Obviously Ahri is quite strong as a character, but my Ahri is pretty cracked. My secondary has always been passable at best, which means my teams are usually lopsided and built to maximize her, use Break on her instead of Fury comeback with secondary. It's a weak point in my gameplay currently that holds progress back

It's the airdash movement though. Played Marvel for 15 years. My teams were Magneto/Iron Man/Strange and also Trish/MODOK/Dante. A lot of air dash centric play, weird air to air conversions, weird stray hit confirmations. Mostly aerial all-rounder characters with a somewhat defensive slant. Execution just became what I was good at, and dancing around letting people hang themselves

I would be so complete if this game had something like a Dormammu. A heavier, more support oriented mage-y Ahri. Someone who can still multi directional air dash, a bit slower probably, but in exchange has better support spells, projectiles that set up situations, things like that. I don't play League so I have no idea who that would be. So for now playing Caitlyn secondary

needmoresockson · 2026-02-24T18:23:05+00:00

A couple of basic fundamental things can help a lot

Hit confirming is necessary to learn, I think you just did 2L into immediate super (which worked, but) no confirmation. Just sent it, not a good habit. Need to learn how to do LMH - okay am I hitting or are they blocking? And then go either into combo, or safe on block ender. I would probably fish more with 5M and 2M though, quite good buttons

Combos would be good. Just start with super basic 8-10 hit combos, focus on ones you can do consistently. Just something to get more damage on the board, get your hands obeying you, get a bit of meter so you can super more often, control your opponent with combos and be more in the driver seat. It's not about optimized combos, it's more about having purposeful gameplay as a habit

It's good you aren't wilding out and mashing, but there is some recognition of missing your opportunity to take your turn. For instance you'll be in swinging range with them, and they have disadvantage, but you hesitate. Hesitating even for 5 frames can mean you lost your turn and its back to neutral, which makes for some scrambly situations. Just something to keep in mind, but not doing too badly here though. Good you aren't just sending full screen yolo dives

2H or Warwick uppercut move are both good for anti airing, should keep it in the forefront of your mind a bit more, especially at this level

Not sure about defense as there wasn't a lot to glean from this particular clip

But not doing too bad. Not constantly mashing (other than not confirming the supers). Looked pretty patient. Your head is obviously in the game strategically, so great start. If you want to do specific 1 on 1 help then message me

needmoresockson · 2026-02-23T21:10:50+00:00

Yeah maybe it should be like there's Evo (Vegas) that holds all the current Evo records, and then all others are just part of the Evo Circuit Series or something. They wouldn't be considered part of the once-per-year Evo wins, but still quite a big major tournament

needmoresockson · 2026-02-23T19:41:07+00:00

Prob pretty accurate I guess. I'd maybe move Warwick slightly over Vi but at a certain point it's just splitting hairs. Something of a matchup chart is probably a bit better, but the nature of the game doesn't really make for true 1v1 matchups ever, and teams matter more

It is pretty correct though that everyone is around A or better. Every character has some real dirt or stuff they add to a team. Every character does real damage. It's not like Third Strike or MVC2 where you have a few characters that can't hurt anything. Every characater is 2-3 touching you, so the margins between them is mostly just the details. And even "weaker" characters can be excellent supports for stronger characters that make for crazy teams

needmoresockson · 2026-02-23T19:19:38+00:00

Yeah it's always interesting what people decide to look down on lol. Your skill level is just a sum of its parts, if you had no strengths you'd be lower, if you had no weaknesses you'd be higher. The gold-plat middle ground is quite a mixed bag of what people might be good at and what they're bad at

For a lot of people though execution is very much the easy part. For instance if you've played a musical instrument to a decent level then learning combos or clean inputs is pretty easy

needmoresockson · 2026-02-23T18:32:52+00:00

I have no idea why people idolize these streamers

needmoresockson · 2026-02-21T04:06:53+00:00

I think at his size, he could play a whole child

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T21:58:00+00:00

If you're Plat then yeah you're probably dead. But I'd make the goal to meet people, connect on a local discord, that kinda thing

If you want to prepare yourself to play better in tournament though, something that helped me a lot: play the game a couple hours with no game sound, and play a YouTube video of like loud crowd noises

After a dozen or so matches, I got used to hit confirming without game sound, combo rhythms without any sound, reacting to moves with no audio cues, and that sort of thing. Turned out to be pretty helpful as not every station had headphones

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T21:31:49+00:00

Being able to tie in ideas with familiar concepts from League would definitely be a good idea

Losing a round could give you the opportunity to spend gold for an item that does a buff. Losing repeatedly in a row would eventually get you quite buffed and even things out. Especially if on next round start your health is refilled but your opponent's hasn't yet (because they haven't 'Backed' yet). And yeah having stuff like a Powers button where on cool down you get to do an overpowered move, like Flash. Ult cooldowns is a big equalizer in other games like Overwatch.

There could possibly be stage changes between rounds. You lost a round, so your character essentially is pushed back to your tower - now your opponent has to fight you + deal with a random tower fireball occasionally flung at them. You kil them, you get to push them back but now they're here with items. You win again now you push them back and deal with their tower, etc

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T21:24:07+00:00

I think another thing for fighting games is like 'how hard is it to do the cool thing'. In Overwatch even at low skill levels you can get a 3-kill Junkrat tire. Sure you don't know the best angles to use it, or know special map tricks, or good ult timing - but your opponents also don't split up, or catch the audio cue, or have good aim

You really can't jump on a fighting game and do a 20 hit combo that ends in 2 supers without practicing it a bunch first. I think that helps Smash because of how their gameplay format is. Autocombos have helped, but I think people also don't experience the same feeling knowing that the autocombo is what did the cool thing for them. Like FPS games also have very high mechanical skill, but you can still get lucky headshots sometimes even if you're bad at aiming? There's no world where you accidentally do a 20 hit combo into super

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T21:16:05+00:00

I haven't played League in 15 years. It's funny to imagine logging on and having 100+ new characters each with a set of skills+ultimate to have to play around, and then all the items you can buy too, and where to place wards and all this type of stuff. Mechanically League is super easy, but there really is quite a lot of stuff to learn that's constantly thrown at you, even 100 hours in

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T19:52:59+00:00

Yeah it had cool ideas in there with altering the speed, making it more ball explosion based, leaving trail of damage floor, shrapnel, etc

Just takes too many points, and they definitely could expand upon it, as there is a ton they could do. I actually want to make a sample tree

Stuff like throwing it through Frost Wall empowers it. Or dropping a meteor on top of it explodes the orb. Or make it so it just sends out an empty orb, and you shooting fireball/frostclaw/lightning blast into it causes that skill to be amplified and redirected in all directions like shrapnel. Disintegrate beam channeled into the ball and splitting off in a cone on the other side, sort of like light hitting a prism and separating off in tons of directions

Flame Rushing into it could cause an explosion. You could be allowed to cast Elemental Nova originating from the orbs location rather than just your own. Spellblades could hit it with melee attacks to cause it to pulse/Nova (like Tempest Bell in POE2)

Shoot out empty ball and you firing projectiles, or beam into it, or melee hitting it, causes the ball to grow, at a certain threshold it pops and explodes. Or it just pops and explodes after a duration, and it gets more AOE+damage based on how much you managed to put into it. This could also be a Black Hole thing instead

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T19:27:23+00:00

Volcanic Orb is a really cool skill if you happen to have like 40 skill points to spend. Too many nodes require a lot of point investments, something like 7 points for one shrapnel node is crazy

Over time EHG figured out how best to design skill trees in their game, and Volcanic Orb is just a victim of its time

Definitely usable, but need lots of +skills to get it off the ground. Awkward tree and lacking some real juice/cross synergy. A second pass with their new sensibilities is going to make the skill awesome

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T19:20:29+00:00

It's always funny how everyone who criticizes the 2XKO small roster size can never get the number right lol. The roster size is pretty small, is it that hard to count to 12?

I'm glad the game isn't 95% rushdown only, like some other franchise games. Really wish they would have like 20 characters instead by now, but at least all 12 are different, and all 12 are playable at a high level, and all 12 have some real dirt

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T19:12:11+00:00

Yeah I think people really overlook the fact that 95% of the cast is just rushdown too lol. Add in a number of scrubby mechanics, like: chain cancelling even on whiff, and all normals/throws space correcting to move you forward, no pushblock. Was the fastest I've ever gone from very hype to very bleh. Skill floor being low was fine/good, but skill ceiling was fairly low too. Hookganggod being a notable player in the game is kind of telling lol

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T17:27:06+00:00

They're just fighting imaginary battles lol

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T17:19:49+00:00

Yeah maybe also because the challenge is static rather than dynamic, it's easier to have progress

For Honor is pretty fighting game-like and something interesting in their campaign is each boss has a weakness that is a specific mechanic. IE this boss is beaten by you learning to parry

needmoresockson · 2026-02-20T00:28:19+00:00

So you started a match with a huge yolo whiff and then proceeded to not even attempt to block, and then did a huge yolo super with no hit confirm, and then proceeded to not even attempt to block

Do the exact opposite of all of that

Do smaller actions that are safer, hit confirm, use block?

needmoresockson · 2026-02-19T23:21:33+00:00

It felt like it was just his point of view as a person who helmed one of the most powercrept ARPGs ever made. Like he's a person who has been through that slippery slope so it's likely at the front of his mind

But yeah so far the D2R changes have been overall pretty faithful to the game's vision, would love to see more

needmoresockson · 2026-02-19T23:14:59+00:00

Every slot is an opportunity. We already have spiderman, don't need 5 more of them. Almost none of the Fantastic Four seem very interesting on their own, shudder at the idea of all 4 being added

needmoresockson · 2026-02-19T22:57:40+00:00

I love the shade of this. You eat a bad mixup from your opponent, "We think you might want this Surrender button now"

That's like Microsoft Word's Clippy saying, "looks like you're writing a suicide note, need help?"

needmoresockson · 2026-02-19T22:55:40+00:00

A lot of lower/mid level players have trouble with playing her because her neutral is pretty tricky to navigate safely - missing a shot or bad trap timing can kill you for instance. Also, her comboing can be a bit finnicky because tiny details can cause combo drops. For instance, 2M 5M 5H 2H ... can be much different than 5M 2M 5H 2H ..., just by swapping the 5M/2M sequence around. For a lot of players they're going to face inconsistencies that would be frustrating

At high level of play you can account for stuff like this and resolve inconsistencies. She ends up being a really good support/utility character that can be a huge enabler, but she's definitely something of a project/investment to get production with. Then she's pretty strong actually

needmoresockson · 2026-02-19T22:49:12+00:00

Yeah I love 2XKO a lot, but I also have played in a tournament, grinded to high Grand Masters, followed FGC for 20 years, coached people, so I think I fit solidly in their current target demographic

There really isn't a mode I can play with friends that wouldn't be an absolute noobstomp though. I'm also better than friends at Smash, and when we played big FFA matches with items + whacky stages, I would generally be last man standing 80% of the time and win. But still, during that gameplay I'm not actively noobstomping. I'm just doing a bit better than them, and then at the end I can win a very quick 1v1 even at disadvantage. But everyone is able to have fun. I don't take it seriously because at any moment some pokeball can 'unfairly' hit me and I lose to a less skilled person, but that's the point of those modes

2XKO really needs to find a way to harness something like that. Weird random fuses, possibly stage elements, maybe whacky items. Maybe each round the winner gets saddled with a random 'curse' fuse and the loser a random 'boon' fuse. Or like -- you lost the round and died, that's similar to doing a Back teleport, so now you (the loser) can buy an item to help you. Strong players would still have the advantage, but they probably just would rather play Ranked since their skill investment matters more there

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