Loxodont needs The Maypul treatment#687

Loxodont feels like kickstarter Maypul where players accidently benefit off of misspaced moves extremely frequently. Loxodont moves often cover multiple mix-ups at once while being safe to just throw out/exit a situation. This leads to very specific homogenizing counterplay that top players excel in, that the lower-mid level struggle in extremely hard, which is reacting instead of predicting. You can’t undershoot him because his moves cover the half the stage and will kill you, if you don’t kill him offstage you feel terrible. Just an extremely polarizing kit. Similar to Maypul.

The counterplay added to Maypul’s Dash Attack is fantastic and I believe that the dev team can find places to make Loxodont’s kit feel more interactive for both players.

Fighting Loxodont feels adjacent to Tekken 8 Heat Mechanics/Moves, where once he connects on your shield you must engage in very specific risky defensive counterplay. His lingering SAFE Hit boxes steal turns and minimize the opponents ability to engage in meaningful movement RPS, sometimes just stuck refreshing ledge invuln for 5 seconds at a time if the Loxodont has enough Magma set up and wants to hit the strong button.

He also has access to safe shield pressure & breaking with an ease that is unmatched, while having the best grab confirms, while having some not super fast but scary reversals to worry about when chasing off stage.

imo, he needs the Maypul Recovery treatment to justify these strengths, or the Maypul hitbox treatment. Probably not both but we’ll see :D

also, his magma explosions on strong attacks need to be stopped as soon as he gets hit. Successfully challanging his strong attacks only to get killed by the delayed explosions is just BS.

I was writing up a long thing explaining why Lox is actually kind of mid… But then I realized:

This leads to very specific homogenizing counterplay that top players excel in, that the lower-mid level struggle in extremely hard, which is reacting instead of predicting.

…is actually the most important part of your post (imo). The counterplay I was outlining for Lox (and this is true for other characters too) is very viable, but is actually somewhat difficult and frustrating to do. Plus, it requires a lot of in-game knowledge you won’t easily find by just playing.

That player-experience divide around Platinum/Diamond is probably Rival’s toughest problem right now. You’re really bad at the game until you’re quite good at the game.