tl;dr: I feel that Burst as a purely defensive mechanic is a bit too weak at the moment (0.3.0).
I am not on the discord so maybe its already discussed there but here are my 2 cents:
I feel like the opportunity cost of Bursting is not really in line with what you get out of it. It sends the opponent flying faaar away which is only really beneficial to wizard as they can start spamming their projectiles. But for cowboy and ninja losing two uses of whiff cancels is just such a huge tradeoff that you basically only do it when you get combo´d at 30% hp or something when you know the combo will probably kill.
Just taking the damage on the first or second combo and keeping the threat of burst is far more valuable as it allows you to set up your turn better when the combo eventually ends. There have been so many people that used burst early and then didnt have the resources to get out of some whiff cancel traps, but maybe thats because people need to learn to play defensively when you dont have access to whiff cancels.
When you burst and you are wrong you just reset your opponents combo scaling and will likely be eating another big chunk and give the opponent lots of meter or just straight up lose the round to the following combo. And even if your opponent didnt bait it or parried it you are now in a spot where you are down in resources(burst bar) and not in a good spot to actually do anything to your opponent because without burst bar you cant whiff cancel so you need to play really defensive for a while.
As an aggressor I am not really worried about getting bursted, as it only ends my combo and depletes my opponents resources AT WORST. When i read it and parry it or make it miss some other way its combo town, population: Opponent with some free super meter on top.
As a defender there are only two real uses: The threat of activation making my opponent try to parry it so they end their combo early or try to prevent getting combo´d to death. Even for preventing a game loss its quite bad as it becomes very obvious that you NEED to burst sometimes in the next 3 moves or are dead, so it becomes very easy to play around.
That is why i feel like Burst is a bit too weak right now as a defensive tool.
I am not a game developer so my ideas on how to fix it are probably bad but I had two thoughts:
- hitting the burst makes it the defenders turn and lets them combo the aggressor
This would make it so the aggressor would really fear a burst and actually play around it. It would keep people in the game more and promote some active (and probably sick to watch) gameplay as now parried burst are even more hype and players getting combo´d can exact their revenge immedietly(which might be cathartic after getting combo´d for a minute or two).
Bursting just resetting the player positions means that the defending player just used lots of resources for very little gain in a game where execution doesnt matter.
- hitting the burst reduces the aggressors meter. Burst or super, maybe both?
This addresses the opportunity cost issue that having no access to whiff cancels is extremely bad, especially when your opponent still has one or even two. It would make it so that bursting doesnt put you from a bad spot into another, slightly less bad spot, but into a truer neutral game state.
Evening the playing field by either reducing the aggressors burst meter so they dont have whiff-advantage or reducing super meter so they dont have access to all the fancy moves(especially ninja and wizard profit greatly from super meter).
What do other people think?
Also obligatory thanks for the game ivisly it has been a phenomenal amount of fun and i hope threads like this are not grating on your patience :D