Rook seems a bit overpowered

Also if I ever go 50-0 or something like that, I’ll post that screenshot and admit you were right.

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Does Fantasy Strike let you record win streaks? I haven’t noticed.

Oh, yeah, maybe it’s only in friend matches. Hmm.

In that case, they can just say that they’ve achieved, like, a 20 game win streak, or say, a 90% win rate over 50 games or something. I’ll trust them not to lie.

Same, although I would request a friendlies match to make sure.

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Same honestly. If only so I can steal all that amazing Rook tech before it gets nerfed!

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@Doombybbr I offer to play you in the Valerie vs. Rook matchup. Are you a strong Rook player? Or are your observations based primarily on plying against Rook? I would offer to play DeGrey too, but my DeGrey is weak; perhaps someone else would be willing to fight you.

I don’t feel it’s very useful to theorycraft these things on the forums, or to make sweeping claims about balance on Day 1; better to actually make a claim (Rook is overpowered) then challenge strong players to prove this claim. Keep in mind we’ve been fighting “this Rook” for about a year now internally, and have nerfed him twice in the past because he USED to be as oppressive as you are saying, but he’s been weakened overall a great deal and some of us would consider him possibly low tier in the scope of the characters that exist.

On restricting design space; as the dev team is mostly fighting game players, we’re aware of how strong his mixups are. They’re intentionally powerful, and his approach game is strong to supplement it. His close mixups aren’t too powerful in our opinion, even barring reversals, because they key off of a normal Throw (Yomi counterable) a lot of the time. His post command grab oki is his worst by intention, because we agree getting all of his mixups off of that would be bonkers. It’s actually surprising you’d think a new character we’d create would ignore Rook entirely and come out without any way of dealing with him. This is a fighting game with very few moves; its been very easy to turn the knobs and make tweaks so far.

That said, part of the reason he has been nerfed a few times already was because at the “convention level” (meaning demoing for complete strangers at PAX or Playstation Experience) Rook was completely terrorizing the new player experience. We’ve made adjustments since then, but he remains the easiest and most powerful character at low levels of play. Some character has to be, so in our game, it happens to be Rook.

The trick is if he’s also that dominant at top level, which we’ve found he isn’t. Again, this is where it’s on you to actually seek out these players and test your theories. If you can demonstrate a balance issue, we are willing to listen. But it’s not useful to state this without fighting my Valerie for example :

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Speaking of, everyone feel free to add me on Steam or ping me on Discord if anybody would like some anti-Valerie practice/advice :smile:

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Added (my steam name is Yggdrasil34)

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After rooks ground B occurs he can do normal throw instead of C to punish jumpers, only normal throw is a good punish.

Why does everyone assume this is about me being unable to beat rook or that I think I have a great Rook game? Can’t I have an opinion on a character without elitists coming out of the woodwork and completely ignoring my points? Why do I have to go on an outragous winstreak before you even concider what I have to say? Is it not enough that I tested out the framedata, did the math and understand the theory?

@Leontes My analysis of Rook was in a vaccuum, not based on the current roster but based on checking out how his move play out in practice mode by checking individual frames, I am nowhere near good enough to put the theory into practice - but that was never the point. I also assumed that even if you got 99% of your balance decisions perfect, you would still mess up 1% of the time.

I would like to see a pro rook go against a pro DeGrey to prove my point of what just how bad it gets when Rook counters another character, currently I expect DeGrey to lose the vast majority of rounds because DeGrey B only gives 10 frames protection. (the reason I am not going to do this is because I do not expect myself to play at pro level and my ideas were based off of pure theory and frame data, I cannot be entirely sure until someone better than me puts this into practice)

not exactly true, rook can normal throw or blue throw, both lead into the throw loop. I checked and even off of blue throw you can do a normal throw, If you wanted to stop the throw loop you should have made blue drop people even further away, but honestly if that is his defining thing then the main problem with rook is that his approach is hard to punish due to armour on block and he has air attacks that come out super fast(the latter being a flavour fail, whoever heard of a flying golem?).

I’m not trying to say that you need to be a Rook expert or that you are struggling fighting him. I was just curious if you COULD demonstrate it. Maybe you can’t, that’s okay. Maybe I should fight CWheezy more. I probably should anyway.

My point is that it’s far better to say something like “Someone show me high level Rook vs DeGrey” instead of beginning the discussion with a claim of something being overpowered. Let us come to a conclusion after actually seeing that, right? Instead we end up talking in circles about “Well if you do this then I’ll just do this” “okay then I’ll just do this!” and so on. Theoryfighter means Geiger can always just Flash Gear everything, just how Guile can “just” do that in Street Fighter.

Unless something has changed in recent patches, his throw will not reach after a command grab without walking forward a bit. Even if it could, Yomi Counter still hard punishes this, and you can react to the command grab because it’s slow enough to and doesn’t grab prejump frames. If you do, Rook takes around 3 damage, so he’s not without risk when attempting these things.

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By the way I have absolutely no issues punishing his B when done totally neutral with Valerie. On reaction, jB crosses the attack up and deals 1, then gets me free BB chain. So he can’t just use it to get in on her for free without a read. If I end up blocking it I still have ways out.

I’m sure others have more tech, like the Jaina Divekick into Throw tech.

DeGrey is also a lot stronger than players think right now. There might be some tools that are underutilized in his kit that are holding him back, and after recent buffs to his nA and the addition of the throw button, he is terrifying.

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  1. Because you are putting forth an argument, and it doesn’t match people’s actual experience in the game. The latter is concrete, the former is not. When there is a mismatch between the two, I would trust the experience of a very good Rook player who has played other very good players (or vice versa) over the theory of someone who hasn’t played the character much (or against the character). (Note: I do not consider myself a very good Rook player.)

  2. You can, but see number 1. Your theory is not going to be as compelling as, for example, lettucemode saying “hey, here’s a way to punish ground B on reaction, and also you are guaranteed a throw if you block ground B.” Later in this same post you say “I would like to see a pro Rook go against a pro DeGrey” so you actually agree with this point: your theory says something, but you want evidence to demonstrate it. If those matches were incredibly even, would you still insist that your theory says X, so X must be true?

  3. Because that would be good evidence to support your claim. Evidence that would be harder to argue against than “but I worked out the math assuming Rook will do these options 1/3 of the time.”

  4. No, it’s not. Because working it out on paper doesn’t tell you that Jaina can jump-back divekick into throw on reaction to Rook’s B, as an example. Because you have high level Valerie players who’ve played against Rooks saying “actually this match-up is fine” and “Rook seems fine based on my experience.” If your theory was true, we would expect the real world experiences of those very good players to reflect it.

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Right. There is a difference between starting a thread called “Rook seems a bit overpowered” vs. “Is Rook a bit overpowered?”

In the first case, you have made a balance claim that you need to back up with empirical evidence. Frame data is very important and you’ve done some good homework, but it’s far more valuable to listen to straight up balance claims from experienced players. Not to say there is no value from inexperienced ones (which i addressed earlier about convention players), but if you were making this claim based on tournament match footage of Rook players terrorizing everyone, you would at least have evidence to the claims.

In the second case, you are allowing yourself to have an actual discussion where I can then enter the thread and say “No, I don’t think so”, and others can say “Yes he might be”. We should be doing this instead of claiming things to be broken (like FSX Midori /salt) and having a healthy discussion about the game.

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Yeah, none of us are immune from the Incorrect Balance Claim Goblin. See my thread about “shouldn’t DeGrey’s air super beat Midori’s dragon-torpedo” which should truthfully be called “I’m not very good at DeGrey and a Midori demolished me on ladder before I created this thread.” :slight_smile:

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Dude I forgot his name, but I’ve met a DeGrey a couple of times that was bloody insane. Probably the best player I’ve met so far, besides some MR.T-something Valerie player.

Anyway, you said you’ve nerd Rook in the past, do you have patch notes of those I can check out curiosity? Thanks!

1: no, you are basing you entire counter argument on git-gud. Who I am(argument from authority, logical fallacy) and what my experience is(anecdotal evidence, another logical fallacy) are absolutely meaningless, only facts and calculations hold any weight in a proper discussion.
2.You clearly are just making excuses to ignore me, if pro DeGrey vs pro Rook was anything other than a curbstomp I would be legitimately surprised, I am accepting the thing only because you are so insufferably incapable of listening to my arguments that I am getting tired of repeating my points.
3. what argument is better than the actual math here? I am not going to go into the mindgames on which of the 3 options rook will actually pick because then he could mindgame the mindgame and it becomes and endless rabbit hole - might as well just use simple math instead of spending days reading a whole ton of psychiatry papers and calculate based on what actions people are predisposed to using the exact probability.
4. Firstly testing out if the throw worked is supposed to be PART of testing out the framedata, you could have mentioned that I missed testing if jump A into throw was possible without coming off as a jerk. Second Valerie has reliable ways of dealing with superarmor, crossing up, doing a lot of damage fast and getting out of rooks range, unless the valerie seriously messes up they should never be in range of rooks normal throw, only the blue one - in short Valerie has some less than obvious counters to rook.

Okay, good talk.

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The best way to determine a competitive game’s balance is not making theoretical arguments or solving equations, it’s assessing the results of actual matches, period. Fighting games, even one as simple as fantasy strike, have far too many simultaneously moving pieces to break them apart into a math problem.

If someone thinks they know a character’s relative power level better than the game’s designer and the playtesters who have been working on it for a year within a week of the game’s early release, the onus is on them to demonstrate it through play, not theoretical discussion. The #1 best way to do this is to play as the character who is claimed to be a problem, and then share the dominating results publicly. Or - as in most cases - play as the character who is claimed to be a problem, fail to achieve dominating results, and then create more posts asking questions rather than making statements.

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And that’s not even to say “don’t use frame data” or “there’s nothing to be learned from frame data.” Obviously frame data gives a ton of useful information! It just doesn’t give you all the information needed to make a balance claim as broad as “Rook’s vortex is too good” or “Rook gets in too easily.”

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Normal throws can grab pre-jump frames, it’s true. I think I remember someone saying that there are 5 pre-jump frames? If Rook’s -4 on block after ground B, there’s no way normal throw, which has 3 frames of start up, will grab a jumping opponent.

Assuming I’m correct about the number of pre-jump frames, of course. I’ll grant I could be wrong, as I’m just going on memory here.

EDIT: found the data.

Apologies. 3 frames pre-jump. Still, that will not allow Rook to throw a jumping opponent after ground B, as his normal throw will “hit” on the 8th frame, at which point his opponent has already been in the air for 4.

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