I don't think Painwheel's flight mode is useful in its current state.

[VictuTheNewb]

[Really long thread warning]


This post will have two texts: the first describing my issues with Painwheel's character ability, Flight Risk, and the second with my suggestions to make it useful.

• Part 1

We all have fought a Painwheel in a Rift Battle or high streak prize fights. Many players equip a a projectile blockbuster to instantly punish her as soon as she becomes airborne. That is why the super aggressive AI for Rift Battles never ever uses Flight Risk. Players don't use it as well because its dash attack can't be used in a combo; its tap attack is really hard to connect and you can't really move yourself, only attack, making it impossible to approach an enemy who is out of reach, even if they are just a little bit out of the range for your grab/dash/tap to connect, you won't be able to use the attack you want to. There are a few situations where you can connect your attacks, like using your dash attack for punishing an opponent who tagged in as Double, but those situations are extremely specific, and Painwheel's animation for going airborne takes way too much time to react properly to those attacks. When your attacks finally reaches an enemy, it will: a) hit a few times and not allow you to combo after that(except for air grab) or b) be easily blocked, leaving your guard wide open for the AI to shove a 1 meter-long diamond on your face.

• Part 2

Oh boy, this is my favorite part: these are my suggestions on how Flight Risk's moves could be used in our daily gameplay.

1: Make an unblockable charge attack(that has just a little bit more of minimal cooldown) for her airborne mode. That is easy to punish with any attack that hits overhead, but, just like every other charge attack, you need to retreat or it will do a really annoying amount of damage.

2: Make it possible for her Flight Risk attacks, or even that one special attack, Violet Grudge, to be used after an air juggle. They have a small amount of hits with good damage, in that way we can get a nice little combo without filling the enemy's blockbuster meter, and would make attackers even more scared of painwheel.

3: Make it so the AI can't block her Flight Risk attacks as often, but use blockbusters if they block correctly. In my opinion, that would change Flight Risk from a "get yourself killed" to a "high risk, high reward" option.

4: Just let us move around a bit so we can hit our attacks.


The main reason I am writing this is because I like her airborne mechanic is an awesome idea, that is just not useful for now. I have asked players with their levels ranging from 41 to 60, and the responses to "do you use Painwheel's Flight mechanic often?" were mostly "never", "rarely", or "I don't like it at all".
It is pretty obvious that my suggestions would not be easy to add into the game or finding balancement for them, so I have posted this thread to let other people share their opinions about it and build up better ideas.

 

[Cellsai]

Painwheel's Flight does have some cool stuff baked into it like her long range grab, but I definitely agree it's not really used much in high level play. I'll mention it to the team!

 

[MrNoggin]

Weighing in:
I’ve been playing since almost the beginning and I have once seen Flight Risk used to actually avoid something: the AI flew over a George bomb. Otherwise the dash has almost always been blocked and trying to fly to engage a grab is just adding an extra step to grabbing and removing the possibility of using a grab to counter after blocking a hit. As you can be hit by Mid attacks I’ve also punished my fair share of the extremely few times the AI has flown; even the AI doesn’t seem to like it.

In the console version it’s extremely cool and unique but on the handheld it seems like it needs to go back to the shop for some tweaking.

 

[Fel]

It'd be super interesting to see flight cancelling be added to SGM in a non-broken way.

Currently the frame data on each move except grab is garbage tier (the new update MAY have changed this?)

 

[fanghoul]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing this changed to be more useful. Compared to Peacock's CA, which has a similar concept, it's really apparent just how little it does. When you're fighting a Peacock, her hopping into that hole can be a damn nightmare. Painwheel taking off is sometimes a free hit for me, and at it's worst does almost nothing.

 

[cappatacus]

I'll admit that I rarely combo my Motor Brigade because I never leveled a Canopy Bounce for my Primed, so I can't quite count the number of times the AI has evaded the entire move with Flight Risk. That's all it's done though lol, literally any other attack can punish it. I love the idea of buffing it in a way that pushes the game even more towards the fluid style of gameplay from console games while retaining the simplicity of mobile. I have no groundbreaking ideas - maybe just let it evade more attacks, so it can be properly used to counter the opponent.

 

[Starsmore]

Easiest way to rework it should be let her flight twice the height she does now, so she would evade almost every attack like The hole idea.

 

[fanghoul]

Easiest way to rework it should be let her flight twice the height she does now, so she would evade almost every attack like The hole idea.

I think this is a great idea. If it went higher, that would be visually much more impressive than just floating at head height. At the moment it looks like she's trying to look Big Band in the eye, not so much that she's gaining some real strategic advantage.

Combining this with the unblockable charge attack as suggested by Victu would probably be too much, but would feel genuinely useful and powerful, and make the whole thing more on par with Peacock's CA.

 

[Liam]

We do have some backlog plans to give Flight Risk and The Whole Idea some changes to make them more useful. The specifics of those changes, including when (or possibly if) they will arrive are a bit TBD.

Using Character Ability buttons for Painwheel and Peacock like we do with Squigly, Beowulf, and Eliza, is something we'll be considering.

 

[MrNoggin]

Having a character ability button would actually improve the tech capacity of The Whole Idea. I’ve found it to be extremely useful as-is, but the double downward swipe can sometimes be screwed up and Peacock will slide instead, which can be very frustrating. Really like being able to pop up under the AI (although I think the hitbox has slid to the left a bit)