Kaijima said:
IMHO to tighten him up and make him less of a crutch. Look, even good players laugh at Sentinel and CALL HIM a crutch, and they're not even entirely joking. He promoted a lazy-daisy play style.
Also to keep Sent from dragging stuff out; even after you know how to counter him, he is annoying to take out due to health, and statistics may have favored the Sent player surviving anyway only to get the other guy in the end with a single combo.
The funny part about this is in a way it is the reverse of initial concerns over Phoenix. People immediately argued that she'd be a useless gimmick due to low health and her great aspects wouldn't make up for it. Instead, people have ended up using Phoenix a lot, and good players are starting to recommend actually using her as a point once you're good enough to not get hit a lot. It's just that we've tested Phoenix in the field and know this already.
The Sent situation makes me imagine what it'd be like if say, normal form Phoenix had great health and was suddenly cut to her low health; would people freak out, arguing that she was doomed since now she was too frail and weak? When in reality, it compensates for her scary abilities. (FYI, if Dark Phoenix didn't exist but normal Phoenix still worked as she does now, I suspect she would still have lower health than almost anybody else.)
Wow. That was a really good post.
I actually love your analogy on the Phoenix thing. It is promoting a lot more careful play and strategy with sentinel to keep the damage and nerf the health.
Still...I just feel that balancing this character could have been better performed by nerfing his X-factor. It wasn't so much of a comeback factor with Sentinel (as its meant to be for the cast in general) as an insurance policy that guaranteed kills.
It just seems unbalanced to take the character with the biggest hitbox and the fewest mixups who is the easiest to crossup or chip and make them so susceptible to damage.
Phoenix has a lot of great offensive options to justify her health. She's a tiger with teeth no matter what situation your in. However Sentinel is very limited in his approach style because so much of his stuff is punishable on block and against mixups.
It is forcing more careful play from Sentinel making him more balanced...but it may have gone too far with him and unbalanced him in the opposite direction by making him TOO punishable.
I just feel a better balance on Sentinel would be found in shaving his X-factor bonus and possibly a slight shaving of his normal damage. Nothing huge but 10k here and there equals a much better match.
Maybe time will prove me wrong, but this nerf worries me because it doesn't appear to have been done very carefully. It seems to have been done as a fast and lazy fix to help even out Sentinel on teams so that he was more of a team player and less of a one man show.
Justin wong seems to agree to an extent. Thing is X-factor was put in just to create comeback factor so it cannot be removed because it generates a lot of memorable stuff. It very well could use shaved though. Some heal while others dont, some get damage increase others dont, or just generally keep it the same as it is universally but to a much lesser degree on the speed/damage bonus. Stuff like that.
Like I said earlier...all I can do is wait and see how this effects the game.
