Now with Iron Galaxy taking the reigns, they went full nerf/buff fest and ruined Sabrewulf. Sabrewulf now has startup on his crouching light punch, he doesn't have a fast back dash but instead hops backward, his Eclipse now has 1 frame start up, his instinct is now a form of cancel where you press both Heavy buttons to cancel any move....I dunno why you would want to do that as Sabrewulf and so on. I'm not a Sabrewulf player moaning, I play everyone but mostly Jago and Glacius.[/quote}
The things that they took away were things that made Saber a crazily oppressive force, to the point where people did not enjoy playing him, or against him, because he felt too easy to dominate with.
The changes you mention still allow him to be such a force... but now there's more method to the madness.
Having a self-cancel to basically make ANY move into a high-pressure tool, make unsafe moves safe, and allow him to get unnatural frame advantage off moves.. you can't see why an opponent would want such a cancel? The same reason People like Stance-Canceling with Whip and Chin in KoF, Squiggly in Skullgirls, or with Vega in SFV; it's a quick recovery move that allows you to get unusual advantage off situations other characters cannot.
Killer Instinct used to be a very balanced game with the worst matchup probably being Glacius/Sabrewulf vs Thunder at a 4.4 - 5.6 match up. But it didn't really mean much, Thunder is still very much a competitive threat. Now it's just a top tier fest like Smash and Street Fighter were Spinal in insanely good and Kan-ra just shifts the entire game into a new keep away chip fest. It's not the same game anymore.
It used to be balanced when people only found 2 or 3 characters really worth using at tourney level, but now, when almost every character showed up in a Tournament where people know even MORE about the game, with a much larger roster, it's LESS balanced?
And now the S3 changes are happening. Almost every system change was made so that the game would lose less momentum. Every character that had a hard time getting in has been given new tools to do such (new runspeeds on Wulf, as well as his dive slash, Orchid's DP cancel out of her slide, Hisako's new ability to cancel into her tele, Thunder's dash-cancel buff, etc). Spinal no longer steal meter, but stops the growth of it, making him have MORE reason to get in and attack, so that he can build while they receive nothing more.
If anything, I think IG is listening to the problems you have with S2, and making adjustments that not only fall in line with your main desire (Modifying without destroying the characters and systems), but also putting more work into achieving this than most other developers do.
They're not going the Capcom way, that balances tool strength with less HP on the characters. They build systems atop what the character has become to the players, and try to say "how can you do what you've developed, but in a more fair fashion?" The normalizing of Shadow counters and input buffers and frame timing off auto doubles is directly in line with what DH preached with their initial systems. And I'm really glad they didn't backpedal on many changes (Such as giving Thunder his Phoenix back, or making Glacius less alien looking, more normal-man ish), when they probably could have generated some easy love from naysayers by doing such thing.
IG definitely isn't perfect. They make odd little errors or release with things that make you wonder "How did THAT ever get to final build?", and they sit on things many of us think should have been changed long ago.
But at the same time, they also seem to put more into updating this game than almost any other company on a similar product. The fact they keep trying to make S1 and S2 character relevant, rather than just buff up and release the new hotness, is actually quite impressive. Glacius Multi-hail and new instinct trickery brings him closer to elements I loved about him in KI 1 and 2, and actually almost makes me look forward to trying him again, as I am in trying out Kim Wu. Giving everyone normal attacks that force flip-out, leading to a universally accessible mind-game too, that strengthens the application of juggle enders, is a great idea. Marrying Juggle and Hard Knockdown to the same ender also gives more depth to that ender type, and keeps you opponent on their toes, while also softening the blow of Sweeps becoming Combo Break-able. One of DH's largest tenants of KI gameplay was to always make playing the game a 2-way interaction, and much of S3's changes encourage and strengthen that, more-so than ever before.
