General consensus on GGST 2.0 Chaos?

[Kjam]

I know it's easy to jump to conclusions based on twitter clips or whatever but... is Chaos actually that good this version? He has the infinite blockstring which is pretty accessible and has strong conversions, but those still cost a meaningful amount of resources and don't consider the resource cost of opening you up. I genuinely can't tell whether he will be strong competitively once optimized or whether he'll land in a healthy spot.

[TarkusLee]

I don't know SHIT about Strive, but I'm hearing stuff that's all over the place. Some people say the character doesn't function anymore, others are saying he's busted with an infinite block string.
I'm curious how the character actually plays out in 2.0

[RedIAmNot]

He's definitely neutered, but unfortunately he's still not very fun to fight. The infinite isn't as accessible as the twitter clips make it out to be; entering that scenario with perfect resources against a human player is way harder than just setting it up in training mode.

I think he'll still be strong competitively, but his new design is VERY annoying. He has the same exact gameplan that he had when he was god 1, just with different tools. Rather than backdash > curse into ggs, he just pulls gun in neutral and immediately forces you to hard RPS between him doing dash button/backdash/jump forward j.2K. Very toxic, but not nearly as good as he used to be. 

[Bossobee]

Somehow, they invented a version of Happy Chaos who does less damage than Bridget while also having to manage two separate meters to only sometimes access that damage, and who seems to just not have offense midscreen anymore, and he might actually still wind up being overtuned. They're creating the kinds of top tiers the haters say don't get made anymore.

 

His neutral seems pretty difficult to get around if he has the life lead, now that the lock-on on his gun goes so insane. I guess it just depends on how easily he can win roundstart and such.

[RedIAmNot]

1 minute ago, Bossobee said:

Somehow, they invented a version of Happy Chaos who does less damage than Bridget while also having to manage two separate meters to only sometimes access that damage, and who seems to just not have offense midscreen anymore, and he might actually still wind up being overtuned. They're creating the kinds of top tiers the haters say don't get made anymore.

 

His neutral seems pretty difficult to get around if he has the life lead, now that the lock-on on his gun goes so insane. I guess it just depends on how easily he can win roundstart and such.

He definitely still has offense midscreen, he just accesses it through slopping gun flip -> reticle RPS rather than through making you block something/pulling steady aim into run up bang bang. 

[Bossobee]

2 minutes ago, RedIAmNot said:

He definitely still has offense midscreen, he just accesses it through slopping gun flip -> reticle RPS rather than through making you block something/pulling steady aim into run up bang bang. 

Ah, I didn't think of that. Yeah that sounds pretty lame.

 

Just a weird rework in general. I wonder if they're gonna try and iterate on this new version of Chaos next patch, roll him back to pre-2.0, or redesign him again.

[RedIAmNot]

5 minutes ago, Bossobee said:

Ah, I didn't think of that. Yeah that sounds pretty lame.

 

Just a weird rework in general. I wonder if they're gonna try and iterate on this new version of Chaos next patch, roll him back to pre-2.0, or redesign him again.

Oh god I hope they don't try to roll him back to pre-2.0. I think with more time in the oven they could make this new iteration work, they just need to tone down his current gameplan of just Sending Shit and focus more on making him play around his normals sans the reticle. 

[TarkusLee]

I think I heard Frankentank argue that pre-2.0 Happy Chaos  fundamentally couldn't be balanced within Strive's systems, but what made him so special? It seemed like everybody could just murder you in season 4.

[Bossobee]

There's a long list of potential answers to this question, which was part of the problem. The core of most of the problems is that, instead of putting you into a "stance" the way it does now, 5H just shot the gun, and he could shoot the gun whenever he wanted. No exceptions aside from in the middle of his super, I think. To summarize some of the greatest hits:

• He got conversions from anywhere, off any hit, whenever he wanted, for full corner carry and pretty good damage (and it was also impossible to burst him back in the day, which is arguably the main reason fullscreen burst exists now)
• The fact that he relied on projectiles to extend his offense meant you couldn't push him out with fd or deflect very efficiently
• He could shoot the gun on whiff so sometimes his normals just weren't whiff punishable, and also the tracking on his gun in these situations was partly rng based which made it feel even worse
• He could shoot the gun while idly moving around (including in the air, which he can't use gun at all in the air anymore) and it loosely tracked to your position without him having to do anything
• I don't think 5H was punishable under any realistic circumstance?

He was also a resource character whose resource management literally did not matter at all:

• Curse was an unblockable projectile that rapidly refilled his focus meter on hit, letting him essentially bypass what was theoretically the main limiter on how much he can shoot
• Deus Ex completely refilled his gun, so after he super wallbroke you he had full ammo now
• His reload animation reloaded one bullet at a time and you could stop at any number of bullets, letting him get a couple bullets back here or there incredibly safely

There's a long list of other, more nuanced reasons as to why he kinda needed to go but they're probably above my pay grade. Also some stuff that got removed ages ago, like how on launch Steady Aim > Fire guard crushed for some fucking reason.

 

tldr his main limiting factors did not work as intended and he could just sorta do his thing without the opponent being able to do much about it

[Kjam]

10 minutes ago, TarkusLee said:

I think I heard Frankentank argue that pre-2.0 Happy Chaos  fundamentally couldn't be balanced within Strive's systems, but what made him so special? It seemed like everybody could just murder you in season 4.

 

Think of it this way. As high as the power level of Season 4 was, this is still Strive. Movement is deliberate, normals are generally tuned around whiff punishes, and defensive tools are built around interacting with stagger pressure.

Chaos was the only character capable of actively attacking instantly during universal movement options like backdash (reducing commitment), was able to negate whiff punish opportunities entirely (oftentimes through RNG), and was able to utilize a non-strike-ish tool that defense really wasn't tuned around to exploit how the system wants you to interact with stagger pressure on his offense. He was the dead opposite of what Strive's general game direction was meant to be, which is why he was perpetually good. To top it off, he was also the character that was best able to exploit Positive Bonus as a mechanic thanks to his conversions, meaning one light hit led to looping offense for ages.

[sanquerosa]

He feels like a snowball monster. I guess he's still the same old Chaos, in that respect. He's probably pretty strong. He can put the onus on you to act extremely proficiently and he's better than pretty much anyone else at punishing misplays when you do take action against him. You've got to when he pulls out gun in neutral or else you have a tracking reticle that doesn't let you play. It's a combination of the good normals, good pressure, and a generally well-rounded toolkit that's great at all times aside from when you're on the back foot. I guess we'll see.

 

I guess it's awful of me, but I hate dealing with one button backdash and two frame throws, and Chaos is really good at killing both those things on autopilot. So that's nice.

[RedIAmNot]

6 minutes ago, TarkusLee said:

I think I heard Frankentank argue that pre-2.0 Happy Chaos  fundamentally couldn't be balanced within Strive's systems, but what made him so special? It seemed like everybody could just murder you in season 4.

The biggest thing by far was how the gun interacted with the game at pretty much every stage. 
Every top tier had nasty reward on hit, yes, but Nobody converted on block as well as Chaos did. Just blocking a single Chaos normal at any point on the screen meant you were in his offense (which was strike throw left/right with a broken overhead and arguably the best throw reward in the game) so you had to play EXTREMELY averse of his buttons at all times... 

...but the problem was his kit forced you to practically dead-sprint at him in neutral. He has one of the best backwalk speeds in the game, one of the best backdashes in the game, and Curse effectively functions as a second backdash, letting him ignore the 5F cooldown between normally slamming backdash by just letting him do backdash > curse, or curse > backdash. 
You had to play outside of the range of his buttons or else you'd be put in offense, but you had to run at him in order to stop him from trying to pull Steady Aim (a 27F fullscreen hitscan), or to try and discourage him from throwing curse (which, when blocked, effectively ended neutral on the spot. It made the gun's reticle tracking much sharper, so he could just pull the gun out, upback/backdash, wait for the reticle to lock on and now he's running offense. It also buffed Steady Aim and made it a 19F fullscreen hitscan.) 

So from the get-go, you're boxing with some of the best normals, with some of the highest reward on hit and the highest reward on block in the game, and you are forced to run into those normals if you want a chance at stopping him from neutral skipping you outright. Couple this with the fact that he has arguably the best offense in the game (Roll is a 16F crossup that full combos (and also enables him to sideswap wallbreak you if he ever hits you on defense), he can shoot off of his extremely ambiguous 5D animation and stay extremely plus on block or full combo on hit, he has an unseeable left/right mixup off of his throw that full combos on hit, he has a ton of f.shiki 50/50 setups that full combo on hit, etc. etc.) and some of the best tools on defense in the game (as mentioned before, obscene normals that immediately start his offense if you even block them, he has a broken air normals with j.2K and j.S that make his jump an absolute chore to anti air effectively, and if he ever landed a mash he would sideswap himself out of corner before you could even burst him back into the corner), it was just absolutely impossible to balance his pre-2.0 design without either gutting him completely or trying to make the entire roster busted as fuck to compensate. 

This all doesn't even cover everything he did; he was the best in the game at using system mechanics (best burst, best YRC, his backdash BRC put you in a high low 50/50 on block lol), and he had a ton of shenanigans that made him infuriating to fight (RNG shot, the infamous whiff button -> gunshot --> win, you could get randomly 1F'd trying to throw Roll and lose on the spot, etc.) He was just an absolute mess.