Month: June 2016

Courtesy of a quick translation from Pentao via PokkenArena, we now have an English version of the huge batch of Pokkén Tournament patch notes that dropped last night. If you thought the previously announced changes for the arcade version were somewhat lacking, well, you’ll have a lot to chew on come June 15th.

While the patch notes themselves are rather extensive, here’s some examples of the most significant changes:

Charizard

• Burst Mode: Synergy Mode time decreased.

Suicune

• jY (Water Gun) now does less blockstun.

Pikachu

• Pikachu’s Nuzzle now has longer recovery frames if you whiff.

Chandelure

• Charge-Release [X] currently reduces the time you have negative statuses on you. Now it also increases the effect of negative statuses on opponents, too.

Mewtwo

• Burst Attack: When you miss with your burst attack, your post-BA invincibility is shorter to make it easier to punish you for failing to grab your opponent.
• All Pokémon Attacks: Drain more Synergy when used.
• Barrier: Timing to block an opponent’s attack is slower.
• Back Y in Field (Fire spin): Timing on canceling fire spin is now slower, must be canceled later.
• Homing Attack: The 2nd part of the Homing Attack now has reduced hits. This makes it easier to CA the homing combo. However this nerf does not apply to Burst Mode Mewtwo X.
• Counter Attack: Fixed the bug where inputting back + CA would sometimes cause you to lose synergy for some reason.

Shadow Mewtwo

• Recover: Recovery time after using recover reduced.
• Thunder: You can now combo after hitting thunder on an aerial opponent instead of slamming them with a hard knockdown.
• Back Y in Field (Light Pillar): Increased hitstun on aerial opponents. Miracle Eye variant also receives this buff.
• Back Step (Field): You can now cancel into an action out of Shadow Mewtwo’s field back dash sooner.
• Counter Attack in Burst Mode as Shadow Mewtwo X: Can now combo out of Mega SMX’s counter attack in burst mode if it either criticals, or is fully charged.
• Psywave (Vortex): Increases how much life is consumed when fully charged. Damage dealt as chip damage decreased when fully charged.
• Earthquake: The gap between attacking and blocking after this move is increased, making it more punishable/less +.
• j.Y in Field: Increased recovery when used. Cancel timing altered. More easily loses exchanges with enemy projectiles.
• Homing Attack: Same nerf as Mewtwo’s. Also does not apply to Mega SMX.
• Time in Burst Mode is reduced.

Supports:

• Croagunk: If an opponent blocks Croagunk, Croagunk reduces their recoverable life.
• Quagsire: Reduces the outward knockback of mud bomb, making enemies more easily trapped in it.
• Diglett: the recovery for summoning Diglett is increased. Diglett’s base damage and damage against guards is reduced.
• Cresselia: No longer has invincibility.

To see the full list of changes, check out the full post on PokkenArena.

It is worth nothing that the somewhat universally agreed top tiers, Mewtwo and Shadow Mewtwo, received the largest amount of nerfs. Both still seem strong, however, particularly Shadow Mewtwo, who received some interesting new combo opportunities and a better recover.

PokkenArena’s Lucario Mod Milin points out, the changes address guard breaks across the board. More importantly, perhaps, is it’s timing. He notes:

 This patch will drop on the 15th of June, a Wednesday, and also just so happens to the be the Wednesday before the weekend that St. Louis Showdown, a Pokkén Tournament Championship Series Minor Event in Illinois, and APEX, a medium to high profile tournament in New York. Both of these tournaments will each feature a great range of skill and some of the top class of Trainers in the Pokkén Tournament scene. It will be interesting to see how these competitors incorporate the changes at the highest levels, and levels of skill in between!

What do you think of the changes? Do they go far enough, or too far? What about the timing? How do you think tournaments should address the issue with the patch? Leave your comments below!

Sources: PokkenArena, Pokkén Tournament