itch.io

I've been playing the game since the first release and always have thought of cowboy as the best character in the game. I haven't played as much since 0.2.4 and I haven't played newest update at all yet, so the things I'm about to talk about might have changed substantially, but I feel like most of it still applies. I play ninja and cowboy both about 45% of the time; I only go wizard that 10% of the time when I stomp someone the first round. I go under the alias Yung Baller in public lobbies, and out of the 40~ or so games I have publicly played (guessing based off of replays), I think I might have lost 3 times, and even then I won the best of 3 two of those times. I also do bouts with friends and also rarely lose. I've come across very few cowboy players (maybe like 2) who spam lightning slash, and I have tried to play a game where I relied on it once and I won but it was boring. I think the problem is as you said, the players you are running across are not creative. Cowboy has one of the most diverse mix-up options in the game, mainly because of teleport, which immediately extends his combo starting and combo continuation potential. I haven't been seeing as many people do this, but as opposed to doing the slam out of the lasso, I prefer to throw out of it to extend combos. I feel like that after the blocking update, projectiles got a very strong but indirect buff, and that also applies to cowboys gun. If you get hit by one of cowboys stray bullets, it can easily take you down 1/3 of your health bar if they choose to expend all 6 bullets, but when I play I tend to hang onto 1-2 in hopes that it will be a tool to help me finish the game out. Gun takes you right back to neutral.  Gun is not very good for combos (other than ending them, however I see this as a waste), but it does combo into itself. It's also very good for mindgames near the end of a close match, I've snaked a couple wins by making people commit to a parry while I pull out the gun only to then holster and hit them with something else. You can bait in neutral and make it very hard to tell when you will shoot, which in turn makes your opponent lose resources VIA move cancelling or potential frame advantage from neutral. You can do the same thing with teleport. I've won matches where the opponent tries to read a teleport and I punish them for it. 1000 cuts is also a very busted super, and is probably the #1 thing to spend meter on as cowboy, as the person above mentioned. Cowboy will struggle to win neutral if you can't read or are not creative, but I think that his payout is arguably better. You don't have to plan as much as wizard or ninja for a higher payout, his kit is more about reads and spacing with teleport rather than planning. I think that casuals will struggle with cowboy in this game more than either of the other two characters. I do not think that the problem you bring up lays within the character himself as much as it is the people who are playing the character.