Zetterburn Fair#927

I don’t mean to present this as an absolute. Please do not interpret this as me begging to nerf this move. Just presenting what I think and hopefully inspires some discussion.

Attached to this post is me getting fucked on. In this scenario, DI out on the first few hits of fair would’ve saved me. I replicated the scenario in a training room and was able to figure that out.

I’m not the most well-informed when it comes to balance decisions, but i do think it’d be a good idea if sweetspot had more hitpause. Right now it’s a guessing game for which DI to use. Neither sourspot nor sweetspot put you in enough hitpause to be able to respond correctly with DI (they put you in 5 and 11 frames of hitpause respectively), forcing you into a guessing game because of Zetterburn’s ability to mix up which hit of fair he gets with his great fallspeed and airspeed.

This, + zetter having up air as coverage that will kill you if you DI out on its sourspot (which you also cannot react to), forces you to play multiple games all in his favor, and he gets followups either way. Add shine in there too to mix DI, and ouch.

For a single move that can start combos, extend combos, end combos, to have very narrow windows of opportunity to process and interpret what I’m about to get hit by, is not only strong, but frustrating. Multiple times in this clip Zetter would fastfall before I could understand what was happening, in order to intentionally hit sourspot instead to extend the combo, instead of putting me far offstage and edgeguarding.

The issue is the ambiguity of what I’m getting hit by that makes the move both very strong and very frustrating to play against. He already has up air for that imo which feels more appropriate because it isn’t a hitbox directly in front of him that he can approach with like fair, and in most contexts it’s a lot easier to visually discern when zetter will be landing a sweetspot on upair because you need to be directly above him and centered. Even though that move does some crazy shit, at the very least I can find more success in DIing the 7f startup 11f hitpause move, but somehow can’t say the same for the 12-13f startup 11f hitpause move.

My immediate thought is adding more hitpause to sweetspot fair, that way the idea would be to preemptively hold out on sourspots, and then react to sweetspot with DI in. In the clip, had I even been given ample time to DI correctly, the move would still lead to a followup, but at the very least the consequence of that followup requires more execution, and would introduce more counterplay and nuance to Zetter’s combos. I feel that giving the opponent a bit better of an opportunity to DI correctly there would feel more appropriate.

Yeah it’s a fucked up gamble because if you DO gamble on DI out at like 70%, you just DIE so it’s not really even a 50/50 gamble that’s worth taking.
Another day of zetter privilege, and if it does get addressed it will just get 1 more frame of endlag/hitpause/whatever. (Another “fix” that doesn’t impact anything in practice)

i think it’s moreso that the same move links into either itself or a sweetspot confirm, and that it feels like there is no DI that will prevent you from getting sweetspot fair, or maybe i’m wrong abt it and the DI scaling patch makes DI out more effective after getting hit by sour fair 4 times and I can dodge sweetspot??? idfk

I believe full DI out does stop sourspot fair from connecting into more things, but its literally killing yourself at 70% if you guess wrong or they accidentally land a sweetspot or whatever. Its a terrible risk

It’s similar to Absa sour/sweet FAir/DAir kicks. In Rivals1 there was drift DI so you could tank the hit but still get far enough away, in this one with the removal of drift DI you are just in a bad situation.

The “repeated DI scaling” thing doesn’t really have any impact in practice either just a FYI, even the 4x hits-in-a-row scaling makes a 5% difference. It’s nothing