I think he's far from unwinnable, he's just not as strong as he once was. I'm curious as to what the summer patch does to him. He already got hella damage buffs.
I want to give a little more insight on Percival's actual status, since he's better than many people make him out to be, but explaining how he got worse is a bit more complex to explain than just a few nerfs. As it stands, Percival has been buffed in several ways: - slightly better 22X recovery, which implies many things. First, you don't punish 22L on reaction fullscreen, even with U skills, and by extension more rarely 22M as there's no visual difference and wasting 50 meter is bad. Yes, if Perci does 22H in neutral he deserves to get hit. Don't do 22H in neutral. Second, he got access to many corner routes with 22X in corner, which can lead to almost full restocks while setting him up for a safejab (+6F okizeme)/meaty cmd grab (beats 10F buttons, mix with delay cH to make them afraid) (ex: c.XXX 214H~L 2U 236H 2H 22H c.L 623M Spotdodge > +6F oki) His snowball definitely got stronger. - 236U doesn't need much explanation, it's that good. - 214XL is always safe (-4F). This is very good for commanding respect even at 0 stocks. While some may say he still plays vanilla, his specials were definitely tuned for Rising. His base gameplan didn't change, but the game changed in various ways: - dash attacks made everyone more aggressive and it's easier for them to contest any long midrange characters - defense got very buffed, with mashing becoming a red tech throw. This implies that shimmies became much weaker, and mashing much stronger, which is very bad for Percival's cmd grab. The only "good" spots to use 5U is to either do it on okizeme or after 214XM, i.e being close and + on block where cH is a threat. Shimmies still have some kind of efficiency, but with Percival's slow walk, backwalk and slow cH (10F startup), it is harder to achieve than the rest. - 5U not giving a combo midscreen is an understandable choice tbh, but much less so because of the above. - the loss of hkd on 623H or 214XH impact his ability to recover stocks, while the game urges to keep the aggression. Usually, you will see Percival players do a RC combo to stock up (c.XXX RC 236H into 22H or 22M 214M~H). This is a rather big downside, although most often people don't neutral tech after 214XH so he can still get a 22L. - 214X is much more important to his gameplan because he needs to get in more often, however it sometimes is required for confirming fM. He requires more technical knowledge on how to perform 214M~H clean hit to preserve 214H cooldown, whereas he could not care in vanilla. - even when Rush was a thing and everyone had better conversions and pressure, Percival still was at the top. Now in Rising, all characters had this replaced by dash attacks, and on top of this, have access to mildly to very strong U skills which completely change the flow of neutral or pressure. Percival's only notable U skill is 236U, while 623U is simply okay (it often drops the last hit but don't tell anyone about that), 22U very situation and 214U useless. You can notice this trend across tierlist about U skills, Zeta is the biggest offender of being carried by them. My personal opinion is that many things Rising brought are too good, with Percival own's archetype firing back to him in this context. I always played Perci, and Rising very much is a game where he's required to be played with a more solid understanding of what he does.
When I started playing Rising, it really did feel like they didn't want to bother themselves with really updating some of the old cast - like they really didn't think how the new mechanics would affect the characters that were reliant of the old game's base mechanics. Percival would be easy to fix by shortening the time it takes him to "load" his stacks; take away his ludicrous hurtbox after he throws his neutral heavy from a distance (you can punish that animation like six frames after it has passed by just hitting the path his sword travelled through); and change it so that his specials' damage isn't bound to the stacks he builds, and that all they do is change the way they work. Yes, it would require they change his DP, as now his stacks make it just multi hit DP - more than normal. But they could easily make it so that instead of his normal DP animation, it would have slightly more increased range via flames or something. It's not that hard to think about how to improve him and give him his edge back. It felt to me that the developers went really lazy when they "updated" him - made me think he must have been the last character from the old game that they updated and didn't just want to spend much - if any - time on him and did just the bare minimum. Feels bad man, as Percival was one of my favorites in the first game. I still love playing with him, even against Siegfried. It's pain in the ass when fighting against someone who actually knows Percival's present weaknesses and really know how to play Siegfried, but it can still be fun. I have a lot of respect to those Percival players that actually have gone to S+, S++ and Master rank with him - that takes a lot of skill.
It seems to be all the characters that have a powerful kit but were tuned down for balance in GBVS got left behind when they started making the game faster and releasing new characters that didn't have sacrifices for being powerful.
showing niche ch damage next to ac starter damage doesn’t really have the effect it would if you showed either both ac starters or both ch starters. i get what you were going for but if i showed this video to my friends who only play fgs casually i’d have to explain to them why that niche hit difference matters esp since it’s around the same difference in damage as the first clip
I dont fear her as much as i did in vs and also i only fought like 4 of them since launch so something bad happen to her for alot of kats to drop her.@@delghatto7315
