Who's your main / Discussion Thread

@demoskinos: Ranked matches take 30 seconds to 2 minutes or so; but Player matches seem to be utterly dominated by spammers and the like since there's not much higher level play going on to stop them; so even though Ranked might take a little longer you've got some chance for a solid, entertaining fight that you could learn something from.

@demoskinos: It takes me a while to connect to any ranked or player matches unless Im in a lobby although its not too too bad. Im playing on ps3 btw.

I feel like I've already said this but let me stress these S.T.A.R labs missions are really mean especially if you want to do 3 stars on some of them. Just did this one for Flash where I had to resort to unplugging my stick and using a controller with the ol' swiping the pen/pencil across your buttons trick that people used to use in Metal Gear Solid for the button mashing sequence just to get by this one mission with 3 stars.

I really like Lex but it doesn't really matter because I don't think I'll play this game online I'll just play it alone until I'm done playing it. If I'm ever going to commit to a fighting game and try to play it online more than once or twice it's going to have to be a very approachable where you're immediately able to play well. By which I mean I'm going to play Divekick online probably.

@demoskinos: I took a break after doing it once, jamming those buttons can get tiring. One of the Lex missions requires you to hold your controller in such a way that you have 1 finger on each of the 4 face buttons, and after that it's still kind of luck based, but the way it ends is hilarious so all's well.

In other news Oblivion is a great film that does "Songbird" way better than Bioshock Infinite.

@themasterds: As a precursor to playing this game I played KoFXIII online (and I think I'm actually much better at KoF overall) and went like 11-19 in ranked matches (I'm 175-30 in Injustice); but I was always able to put up a solid fight and nice thing with KoF is there aren't really turtles or spammers, people just get in there and murder your ass. It's a really long while between major new IPs in fighting games though so if you don't dive into this one you'll have to wait another 3-4 years at least; I guess I'd say try to get halfway decent at another one that has a steeper learning curve and you'll find the Injustice/whatever other new IP community to be much smoother and acclimating by comparison. Also most fighting games have pretty good Very Hard comps that will react and respond like a skilled player would; the Injustice/MK9 ones cheat though so you might prefer something like KoF in that regard. If you still have a PS2 KoF XI is like 3 bucks and still has an excellent comp to fight against (though a motherfucker for a final boss), probably the best PS2 purchase I've made since my dual Final Fantasy XII/Valkyrie Profile 2 purchase at XII's release date.

Bane is great! I love breaking dudes to end the match. NO PAIN, NO BANE (ｏ`皿′ｏ)

@fredchuckdave: I'm happy just going through the classic ladder 24 times and trying to get as far in STARS as possible. Really hoping they've made it so that anyone can finish it this time and it doesn't get really hard towards the end. It'd be nice if the hard part was 100% and the easy part was half syncing it.

I'm not really interested in playing fighters competitively honestly. Too much to learn, I barely can block properly. So not interested unless we're talking about Divekick. I want to get into Divekick. Mind you since I have a basic understanding of Injustice I would like to see a Scrub league amongst the Giant Bomb extended family. I guess that'd mean the engineers and maybe GB guys now a days since Tested isn't in the building and Screened is dead but hey, maybe they could get Brad Muir to come in. I wonder who he plays as. I guess... Catwoman?

@themasterds: Brad Muir clearly plays as the Joker; always smiling.

I like to play with Cyborg Just so he can scream out BOO-YAH!!!!

@rupertthebear: Try out STARS mission 93 if you want to see some excellent usage of BOOYAH

The icon you get for winning an online match without ducking is the best one in the game, one of the better backgrounds as well (got it accidentally).

I was practicing Green Arrow, until i got Nightwing's New 52 costume.

He's real quick and all of his combos are super easy to learn an effective. I don't use the staff much though, i usually rush with the batons and keep hitting combos off.

P.S: Deathstroke sucks, I've literally lost 3 matches by just not being able to rush him with all the bullets flying.

Hmmm.. thinking about trying to get a bit better with either Ares or Shazam. Ares EX projectile is vicious it straight up does 14% and knocks down! I also like that he can teleport around making it easier to get in on people who try to zone you. I'm not quite sure what the point of Ares going invisible is though. Although, I guess you could to combine that and teleport? Although still I'd think the position of the camera would give away that you just teleported anyways.

@demoskinos: Ares' EX shot is nice, but you won't catch a really good player with it raw. He might be a tiny bit on the weak side (although where the game's at right now that's not a big deal, if it ever even will be), but he's got pretty beefy stuff and seems pretty fun. Mr. Aquaman made top 8 with him at Civil War last weekend and even beat out a Doomsday player.

Shazam is one of the most mobile characters in the game. Basically from what I've heard, in early tests superman had a block infinite because his f23 ice breath was +14 on block, so anyone who couldn't dash out fast enough (which was basically the entire cast) had to sit there and take it. Shazam's teleport was pretty much the only thing fast enough to get out.

As far as Ares' invisible power, it's really good for high-low mix-ups because they have a shit-ton of problems seeing your character, so they have a huge issue trying to react to whether you're doing a low attack, mid attack, or overhead.

I've noticed some pretty off-kilter things in the game that more than anything tell me that the game is going to be getting some balance patches in the near future.

@example1013: So is there an archive somewhere I can watch that at? By the time I got off work yesterday It was over. I'd like to see how some of the "pros" are playing some of the characters.

@demoskinos: Check out youtube.com/FGCSabin for whatever VODs are available. Idk if they're all up yet, but there are at least a few, and Arturo Sanchez (the guy who takes care of the channel) has also been doing a lot of tutorials and casuals, so there's plenty of footage there besides the event. The rest will probably go up at some point this week, Civil War just ended yesterday and I'm sure the streamers were super-busy and didn't have a ton of time to get together footage to upload today.

Deathstroke is a 10-0 match-up against people who don't want to block.

So I ran into a guy yesterday who it between 39 to 48% combos on 4 separate characters. I just wanted to let everyone know there are some insane people out there....

To my credit I was very close to beatin him on my match against him

@example1013: I'm not saying that Deathstroke is an invincible god. Only that I've seen enough of the game to know that there will be balance patching overall and not specifically to nerf any particular character.

@hailinel: Please tell me what's going to need to be patched that you already managed to discover.

Dude, I'm not trying to be antagonistic here. I'm being realistic. Injustice is the first game in a new fighting game franchise. No matter how much testing and balance tweaking was done prior to release, there's almost certainly going to be something that slipped by the testers, or something that didn't become evident until a whole lot more people got their hands on the game and began providing feedback. I like the game well enough, but I'm not going to say that it's perfect out of the box.

@hailinel: If you can't provide evidence to back up your claim, then you're just blowing hot air, so to speak. If you haven't run into anything that's unbalanced, then as far as you're concerned, the game is balanced. Sorry if it seems like I'm jumping down your throat, but it irritates me to see statements that violate the basic rules of logic. And yes, of course there is undiscovered tech, the game has only been out a week. But you can't use it as evidence until it's been discovered. All I'm saying is, let's just skip talking about balance patches entirely and not even mention them until we have something that actually needs to be addressed. Just as easily as people can find new tech that's really strong, people can also find new tech to counter it, without any patching needed.

What's with the hostility? Jesus.

Sorry if I came off hostile, lol. All I'm trying to say is, if you don't have anything specific in mind, there's no need to mention balance patches. If you want to talk about stuff you've been having trouble with that feels hard to counter, please, by all means bring it up.

Batman, Deathstroke, Nightwing, Green Arrow and The Flash.

Like, UMvC3 hasn't been patched once. MvC2 never got patched once. Now, whether or not those games are balanced is a bit of a different story, but they've been two of the most popular fighting games of their respective eras, with no patching involved. It's way, way too early to assert that Injustice is going to need balance patches with any kind of authority.

So I am approaching my limit on Nightwing, I feel solid enough with him to try and adopt a new character. So far superman seems like the next bet. He has a good balance between range and close up combos, plus that flying punch really helps close gaps. Although I am a bit interested in two of the bigger guys, Bane and Doomsday.

Before release I was going for green arrow and Harley Quinn but now it is out I'm really liking the flash

@sackmanjones: Superman is great. He is one I've been toying with getting better with. His air laser vision is pretty damn incredible that scoop move he has is fantastic too.

So man, people online are super salty. I played with a few people who beat me like 3 times each and once I figured them out and kicked their asses on the 4th try they all quit. Instead of actually manning up and figuring out ways to beat shit people just cry and quit like babies. Tis to be expected I suppose.

@example1013: I kinda do need to work on my blocking, i hardly ever move back with my playstyle.

@stevetheradroach: Dealing with spamstrokes isn't about finding a way to move past the stupidity, because there is none. You have to play completely straight-up and honest, and that means you need to be patient, slowly move up, and if you're not in range to punish, block. His forward rifle shot is -21 frames on block. You might not understand frame advantage, but basically what that means is, as long as you're close enough to hit him, you can do literally whatever move you want and beat his fucking ass, and there's nothing he can do because he's still stuck in the animation from shooting his gun and can't even block.

It's a similar situation with his pistols, although those are a bit less advantageous, but you can poke him out with many moves still. The only thing to watch out for is that his EX rifle launches a grenade, and the grenade hits overhead so you have to block it standing. I think everything else you can block crouching.

@demoskinos: I bet you get the most RQs and ragemails from salty scrubstrokes. There's always a flood of spammers who abuse scrubby, skill-less mechanics to make themselves think they're good, and get mad when someone actually beats them with skill.

I haven't had any salt matches, but I did have a couple people stop wanting to rematch after I stopped fucking around with Black Adam (who I was totally free on last Thursday because I was playing him completely wrong, sorry for the poor matches btw lol) and brought out my Soviet Skirt/Soviet Supes and proceeded to bop them. I don't even have long combos, but WW has great space control at mid-range to keep out people who don't understand their characters well, and supes has a pretty easy wake-up game with all his gap-closing moves, although I'm sure they're unsafe on block and I'll eventually have to learn how to play him for real.

@example1013: I had a Lex that literally all he did was jump around doing his heavy air attack. After one match of catching on that was ALL that he was going to do I punished him every time he tried it on me and then he quit. Its just sad people would rather get angry about it than man the fuck up and figure out how to beat their opponents strategy. I'll be the first to say I'm not great at all but I don't quit matches. I'll stay in there and take my lumps.

@example1013:I had about 7 people default quit on me yesterday (non DC), since those count as losses for you (even if they do it from the menu) that was a nice 200 point rating dip (this is why rating is all over the place and completely meaningless at present; at various points I've had a higher rating than everyone in the top 10; which to be fair a few of them suck but some of them are pretty damn good).

In other news I played about 10 top 100 people yesterday so maybe the matchmaking is getting better (probably just less people playing/matchmaking works with 10k-20k people online but not 50k+), went 8-2. Been playing Wonder Woman and Frost against people with lower records to try to make it fairer but it seems to be messing up my Lex game a little. Joined like 5 KOTH lobbies and all 5 of them had Deathstroke spammers; player matches are pretty bad in this game.

Been playing Nightwing, purely using staff (I'm no good at all with the escrimas), the staff is godtier and absolutely destroys most noobs that are playing atm. QCB+A (spinning staff move) is amazing in close quarters, and great to use after a knockdown because most people don't block. For a good juggle, forward A>neutral A>staff spin is a good 25-30% damage. Jumpers, use the bfA jump attack, or simply neutral medium if closer. Poking at medium range, light attack or back+light is amazing, most people don't see it coming at all because the range is deceptively long.

I'm not great at long combos and I haven't discovered many long staff combos, but the basic moves and specials do very nice damage and it's good at pretty much all ranges. Only downside is you have much less mobility and a crappy jump in staff mode. And I still haven't figured out how to deal with deathstroke spammers because Nightwing's ranged attacks are slower than his guns, it seems like his greatest weakness.

I fought a Joker with sort of an unfinished teeth vortex, but I could see where the player was going with it. Lol I quite enjoyed that, even though I was on the wrong end of it. Kind of want to explore it myself now.

I also play NIghtwing and have really been using that staff a lot more. It does a freakin ton of damage and like you said combos are extremely easy to weave together. If you get someone in a corner you can go from (ps3 controls) Triangle, X, staff spin and that is usually in the 28% range. Also the staff jump covers half the screen in one bound. While I still tend to use the escrimas more for just the greater variety and speed, I have found myself coming back from fights Im getting my ass kicked in by using the staff.

Doomsday is the only one i am good with so far.

I don't use him at all, but I ran into a really really good Grundy and he almost wrecked me. I was nearly dead on my second bar and he still had near full health, but my Quinn pulled through. But his Grundy was mad impressive.

Anyone else having trouble viewing their Hero card online? Like, not the one from the single player, but in the multiplayer menu. I can't even look at my own w/l ratio.

Sorry Oni I'm on my phone so I can't properly reply but yes I have the same issue. I have yet to pull up my own card in multiplayer, it's a weird issue considering everything else works fine.

So far I'm mostly playing The Flash. I just really like his speed (yeah) for rushdowns.

I'm also using Batman quite a bit, for the occasional dude that does nothing, but spam Superman's Heat Vision or Deathstroke's gun attacks.

Aquaman is also pretty cool.

Characters I'm having the most trouble against right now are Catwoman (her attacks seem to break pretty much every attack of The Flash) and well played Banes/Grundys. (I had one guy perform the complete Grundy rhyme on me I think.)

Oh man Grundy's chain grabs are brutal! He does all that damage and gets either an Armor or Damage buff! I wish I could play him well but I know that would go exceptionally poorly if I tried to take him online.

Wonder Woman is pretty interesting, a purely defensive character who's very strong against melee types (other than Grundy who's broken in that regard) and you'll generally have a solid chance of winning against anyone who isn't projectile happy; extremely good and easy to use normals and mostly useless special abilities/almost totally useless second stance; she's definitely a bottom 5 character but you can still beat anyone in melee range if played well enough. Unlike Lex the game becomes almost solely about your positioning and there's a decent back and forth with Bane and Flash especially.

I like playing Catwoman.

So, two things. One, I'm starting to really like Catwoman she is really fast and her pounce from her cat stance seems to catch quite a few people off-guard with how far the range actually is. She seems generally fairly good at applying pressure and doing rushdown but has zero projectiles so.... closing the gap on zoners takes a bit of work.

Secondly, people are still but hurt online and continue to quit like every fucking match they lose. Hell, I didn't even use Raven who I'm best with tonight I was fiddling around with Catwoman and Green Lantern. Took my losses in stride but as soon as I got close to a win everyone quits. It was so bad the one guy I found that didn't quit I sent a message to thanking him for not quitting.

Still, online is fun when you don't play children who get angry the second you beat them. I'll probably continue to play this throughout the summer at least. I really hope they don't fuck up the DLC this time.

So my thoughts so far are that Quinn is defintely my girl. I have a pretty hardcore streak going with her. But one thing is bugging me: projectiles shouldn't send you flying so far back. When you have a spammy Deathstroke or something and you are slowly working your way in and suddenly you get clipped by one bullet and get launched all the way back. Quite annoying.

Also is there any functional difference between player match and ranked match? I mean in Marvel vs Capcom 3, when you are in a player match, it records no history, but in Injustice it keeps track of you wins and losses, so I'm not understanding the difference.