Cowboy does really, really good damage. Even before the damage buff he was still the easiest character to get really good damage off of one combo with.
I think about half of the cowboys I've fought spammed lightning strikes. And then half of the ones who didn't were notably clever. Before 3.0 I'd say that the matchup was cowboy sided when fighting him as ninja, but with ninja's new teleport and cowboy's nerfs, he's doing worse than ever.
I think the main thing that makes ninja harder than cowboy is air game shenanigans. It's harder to do precise double jumps and air dashes to be in just the right position to hit the stuff you wanna hit. A good combo takes lots of planning and foresight. I think cowboy gets off on those regards way easier than Ninja. Because his teleport makes this sorta stuff really forgiving. For better or for worse.
Cowboy may have the most variety in terms of functionality among his moves but most of it isn't very good in practice. Though his alternative shenanigans did get buffs in 3.3.
Speak of the devil, time to go look at 3.4, I worry... I haven't heard much good of it.
1 year ago(+1)
In practice the nerf really only cut the reps you can do before needing to teleport in half. The rest of the problems with the move still remains but it's infinitely more tolerable. I'm willing to ride it out as is until more changes to the character are made.
The other nerfs to cowboy aren't that cripplingly bad but the gun bait nerf is still very harsh and uncalled for.
New tweet looks cool / promising , seems like we will be able to use bullets as more of a combo tool now
https://twitter.com/ivy_sly_/status/1598847829090656256