EA patch 9: Why are we posting at ungodly in the morning
The patch (8/18/18) is now live on steam so if you haven't yet, restart your games and pixel lobby servers to receive it. Verify your files to get the update instantly.
Tianhuo is a difficult character to balance against the rest of the cast. Her mobility, mix-up potential and long, flashy combos are unique to her, and this can present a challenge. For some time now, she has been over-performing. We wanted to make sure to preserve her defining characteristics and leave them intact, but reduce their potency. Her damage values and scaling have undergone various tweaks to bring her damage more in line with the other characters.
Additionally, various mix-up and pressure tools have been reined in. Instead of removing them outright, they have been moved to her level 2 super, Ran Shao Feng. In previous updates, we started to re-purpose Ran Shao Feng from a tool to rack up significant combo damage into a power-up that gave her extra utility and mix-up potential. This patch continues that trend, balancing out her risk and reward, and requiring the player to make more tactical decisions with her resources. We will continue monitoring Tianhuo and all of her various match-ups following this patch.
Gameplay
Arizona
- Now has a proper air throw. She carries the opponent to the ground with a headbuck.
Velvet
- Damage reduced across specials
- Chip damage increased slightly on Shatters
- Fixed a bug causing Velvet to sometimes lose invulnerability during 623D
- Fixed incorrect damage scaling on 214A and 214C (Minimum damage should now be increased)
- Minimum Damage reduced on supers
- B is slightly less safe on block
- Now has a proper air throw. Throws further away than most.
Oleander
- Now has a proper air throw. Functions like the ground throw which steals meter, grants 1 magic, but does little actual damage.
Paprika
- Gift toss is slightly faster
- Now has a proper air throw. Functions similar to ground throw, but can combo into more types of attacks depending on height.
Pom
- Now has a proper air throw. Always throws backward.
Tianhuo
- Flips now are only capable of passing through opponents during dragon install
- Flips can no longer directly cancel into eachother
- Flips have slightly smaller hurtboxes
- Ran Shao Feng timer increased overall
- The timer for Ran Shao Feng no longer speeds up while grounded
- All damage during Ran Shao Feng is now scaled by 25%
- Magic regen now gets paused for an extended period after flight has been used
- Magic regen is now paused momentarily when airdash is used
- All magic regen cooldowns are disabled during Ran Shao Feng
- Flight startup in Ran Shao Feng now matches normal flight startup
- Tian gains 50% less meter during Ran Shao Feng
- Both Air and Grounded Volcanic Bash (236B) cause slightly less hitstop on the first hit
- Both Air and Grounded Volcanic Bash deal significantly less hitstun on the first hit
- Grounded Volcanic Bash damage now matches the air version
- Air Volcanic Bash JD now matches the grounded version
- All versions of Volcanic Crash (236C) now apply JD
- Volcanic Crash during Ran Shao Feng now bounces tianhuo off of the ground instead of going straight into standing
- The bounce from Volcanic Crash during Ran Shao Feng is flight cancellable
- Fixed even more cases where 7D, 4D and 1D would appear to armor through attacks rather than dodging or getting hit, as intended
- j.A startup time increased slightly
- j.A hitstun reduced on grounded opponents
- j.B JDG increased
- Damage reduced on specials
- Damage increased slightly on Super
- Now has a proper air throw. Easy to followup with magic abilities.
Predators
- No longer turns into arizona during cross canter
- No longer turns into wolf when throwing
Known Issues
- If Velvet gets hit by another Velvet's level 2, some specials may act particularly weird/disappear.
- There may still remain some instances where Tianhuo flips gain armor, continue reporting this one!
- It is still possible for Tianhuo to occasionally lose momentum during some airdash cancels
- Pom is still capable of calling multiple level 2's with certain setups