I've been researching stuff for the final portion of my frame trap guide, but this patch has left a *really* bitter taste in my mouth. I don't know that I'll be finishing it any time soon. Nerfing Leixia and Tira the way they did has really shaken my faith in the future of this game. BUFFING Astaroth, a character with one-touch-death wall combos, but nerfing the middle of the road characters? Leaving poor ZWEI to suffer? I like that they toned down Maxi, but I feel like they messed up one character for every one they got right.
Leixia's changes don't even follow a reasonable train of logic in most cases. FC3B did 30 damage before. Nobody complained about this move. It was an i19 move that did 10 more damage than its TC'ing, i17 variant. This is a reasonable trade off that by no means deserved their arbitrary nerf. She's one of the lowest damage characters in the game, yet she got damage nerfs? Her 44A was never a problem. It's not overpowered by any stretch. It's a horizontal mid with moderately good range that sets up a small damage combo on hit that has damage comparable to the raw damage done by similar moves on other characters. the +4 Feint nerfs were utterly mindless. Not only were these moves steppable on reaction before, but they had notorious hitbox issues that caused them to whiff. Namco took moves that were risky but moderately useful in certain situations and shit all over them without cause. The WR B (BE) nerf wasn't *entirely* without warrant, but they took it too far, nerfing everything about the move, instead of just the damage it did.
Honestly, the CE damage change feels like a slap in the face to me. It comes across as a cheap and poorly thought out way to "counter" the nerfs to her other areas. The only major complaint about Leixia that I have consistently heard from high/er level players is the double CE. If they had just limited her to 1 CE, tweaked her +4 feints to not be so buggy, and slightly reduced WR B (BE) damage, she would have been FINE. A perfectly competitive, unbroken character with solid mixup potential. Now she's a pixie hitting people for next to no damage, while retaining her only broken aspect when she has 2 bars.
Don't even get me started on the guard break nerfs. These are what piss me off the most. Her guard break damage was nowhere near being too high. Characters with more damage and comparable levels of mixup have equal/more guard break damage than Leixia, yet nothing was done to change these other characters. All in all, this patch was a botched effort that only fixed about half of the major balance issues in the game.
Goddammit, Namco.
