I really enjoy playing Miss Fortune, both head on and headless, so it was natural I would eventually invest in Ms. Trial and try to make her work. This thread is not about how good she is on paper but needs a big rework in practice, this is just me pointing at some stuff I think is unexpected behaviour in the game, and how that hinders Ms. Trial's potential.
First of all, we know how strong precision buff is. Getting 5 stacks just by intercepting, on the character with the fastest jab (with a non-low profileable hitbox), who also has a 3-move combo of 5 hits is obviously very strong. Then, we add to the equation the second SA, which gives it a perfect pierce effect on those hits, making it crazy good. And let's not forget MsF gets enrage and evasion from her MA and PA respectively.
Now I know, Ms. Trial is a silver variant, her atk stat is not the highest, of course. That doesn't stop Purrfect Dark, Shadow Ops or Freaky Friday from being very good at what they do. So why is Ms. Trial not rated highly? Well, the thing is her gameplay is not consistent.
This strongly relates to the wording of her first SA, "(...) when hitting a dashing opponent...". I just made a thread about it if you wanna read it (and If you are a dev, please please do read it
), here's the link if you're interested https://forum.skullgirlsmobile.com/...onent-is-a-very-inconsistent-condition.19191/ . The tl;dr of it is hitting a dashing opponent is really inconsistent, and very very unreliable, unlike hitting an attacking opponent. Even if intercepting doesn't guarantee the last one, the moment you get the hit, you get your SA, easy. But playing with Ms. Trial, who as a MsF naturally intercepts in an extremely smooth way, you may get 3 clean intercepts that give no precision.
This already kills the main attractive of precision, which is the moment you get a hit, you know it won't trigger any undesired SA (on-kill triggers, dmg reflect, chance procs etc.). This leads to situation where you think you'll be safe from, for example, killing Immoral Fiber, and getting deleted for, IMHO, simply playing the right way with the variant, which is intercepting with a jab or Fiber Upper, then doing some single hit moves to finish the opponent. This leaves Ms. Trial in an awful spot where the SA turns out to be something like an increase on crit chance and a full pierce effect on some hits. And I say awful because for a damage increase there are many other variants, both silvers and MsFs that fulfill that role nicely already; and also because it leaves the player in an awkard situation when choosing a moveset. Is crit damage a good investment or not? Am I wasting stats by using pierce with her or not? Will her taunt be useful to equip or is it an overkill? And there will not be a correct answer until the SA behaviour is consistent in one war or another.
To close the idea, I know not all variants have to be good. But I think the devs have shown us again and again that even bad variants should be usable or at least not fundamentally flawed in their opinion, and I absolutely agree with that. It's very fun for me to find niche good situations to use otherwise bad variants, and the ones that are plain bad in general should be because some other variants are stronger in (almost) every other way. I think Ms. Trial doesn't pose any risk by being more consistent: her max atk is relatively low and her SA naturally prevents the first hit from an intercept being a precision hit (unless it was previously gained), encouraging smart use of her moveset, a common theme in MsF gameplay IMO. It really sucks to have variants being underused not because they are bad, but rather because the game impedes them to work as intended. I think the dev team should be more vocal about what weird behaviours are intentional/fine by them and what is not, I'd love to give my Chameleon Twist, my Ms. Trial, my Idol Threat and eventually my Risky some good use.
Thanks for reading until the end <3
First of all, we know how strong precision buff is. Getting 5 stacks just by intercepting, on the character with the fastest jab (with a non-low profileable hitbox), who also has a 3-move combo of 5 hits is obviously very strong. Then, we add to the equation the second SA, which gives it a perfect pierce effect on those hits, making it crazy good. And let's not forget MsF gets enrage and evasion from her MA and PA respectively.
Now I know, Ms. Trial is a silver variant, her atk stat is not the highest, of course. That doesn't stop Purrfect Dark, Shadow Ops or Freaky Friday from being very good at what they do. So why is Ms. Trial not rated highly? Well, the thing is her gameplay is not consistent.
This strongly relates to the wording of her first SA, "(...) when hitting a dashing opponent...". I just made a thread about it if you wanna read it (and If you are a dev, please please do read it
), here's the link if you're interested https://forum.skullgirlsmobile.com/...onent-is-a-very-inconsistent-condition.19191/ . The tl;dr of it is hitting a dashing opponent is really inconsistent, and very very unreliable, unlike hitting an attacking opponent. Even if intercepting doesn't guarantee the last one, the moment you get the hit, you get your SA, easy. But playing with Ms. Trial, who as a MsF naturally intercepts in an extremely smooth way, you may get 3 clean intercepts that give no precision.This already kills the main attractive of precision, which is the moment you get a hit, you know it won't trigger any undesired SA (on-kill triggers, dmg reflect, chance procs etc.). This leads to situation where you think you'll be safe from, for example, killing Immoral Fiber, and getting deleted for, IMHO, simply playing the right way with the variant, which is intercepting with a jab or Fiber Upper, then doing some single hit moves to finish the opponent. This leaves Ms. Trial in an awful spot where the SA turns out to be something like an increase on crit chance and a full pierce effect on some hits. And I say awful because for a damage increase there are many other variants, both silvers and MsFs that fulfill that role nicely already; and also because it leaves the player in an awkard situation when choosing a moveset. Is crit damage a good investment or not? Am I wasting stats by using pierce with her or not? Will her taunt be useful to equip or is it an overkill? And there will not be a correct answer until the SA behaviour is consistent in one war or another.
To close the idea, I know not all variants have to be good. But I think the devs have shown us again and again that even bad variants should be usable or at least not fundamentally flawed in their opinion, and I absolutely agree with that. It's very fun for me to find niche good situations to use otherwise bad variants, and the ones that are plain bad in general should be because some other variants are stronger in (almost) every other way. I think Ms. Trial doesn't pose any risk by being more consistent: her max atk is relatively low and her SA naturally prevents the first hit from an intercept being a precision hit (unless it was previously gained), encouraging smart use of her moveset, a common theme in MsF gameplay IMO. It really sucks to have variants being underused not because they are bad, but rather because the game impedes them to work as intended. I think the dev team should be more vocal about what weird behaviours are intentional/fine by them and what is not, I'd love to give my Chameleon Twist, my Ms. Trial, my Idol Threat and eventually my Risky some good use.
Thanks for reading until the end <3