First of all for those who do not know me, I am considered one of the best pom players there is for now, I have dedicated this game around 800 hours at the moment, I have been a big fan of the game since its inception and today I come to talk about a topic of which I feel it is important, which is the overall character balance of the game, mainly from the perspective of the character that caught me from the beginning, Pom, I want to touch this issue mostly because I am concerned about a very important aspect in this moment, which is that Pom no longer feels like a character that you can have fun using anymore, what do I mean by this? Simple, frustration.
Every pom player knows very well that even because of her archetype, Pom demands too much to be able to win a round, mostly because it was already quite difficult to have an advantage or hit the opponent to begin with, also she always was one of the characters with the least average damage and the smallest hitboxes in the game except for her C moves that even then are quite easily punishable, and a ''reversal'' that only helps her get back to neutral and sometimes prepare some setups that may or may not be very helpful depending on the matchup.
Anyway, the main point I want to talk about right now is about the new changes to her JC since it is quite remarkable that it is now much more complicated to confirm a combo or even win the neutral unlike other characters that practically don't care about the distance when they get any kind of confirm, specially when some of their moves are even longer than Pom's 2C and can still get pretty big damage from it or do their full combo without problem.
I consulted this topic with several people and I understand that this type of change was made to maintain a more focused style to the use of dogs but what worries me is that pom by herself is no longer a character who has the necessary tools to defend herself or attack properly even with her dogs, also the rewards she gets from almost all her confirms are laughable compared to what everyone else can do on any situation, even on resets and okis.
Although I understand perfectly that she needed some nerfs in some aspects, in my consideration this was not the way to make her a more balanced character, mostly because the way she is now feels frustrating and disappointing to play with, to the point that certain matchups feel now almost impossible to win at high level play like Velvet or Oleander because she now lacks the tools to fight properly a good zoning and any kind of mistake will always cost her almost all her health because the only way to be viable with her right now is by being completely defensive since her offensive setups aren't that good anymore.
In my honest opinion if I could do some changes to her would be that she only needed shorter hitboxes on her JC, make it add more JD and some damage adjustments, even other changes to it instead of making it way slower since this kind of modification makes JC very useless now in all situations (neutral, combos, pressure, exchanges, setups, resets) considering it was her best button but now she has nothing to make the opponent feel worried like at all and I can confirm it too when I played against other poms, she really doesn't feel like a threat anymore, even when she uses her dogs the overhead and sometimes the low pressure is almost non existant unless she is completely close to you which is veeeeeery hard to achieve anyway and the damage is almost never something to worry about.
Sadly after these changes even some pom players have decided to drop her because of how frustrating it has become to play with her, even me at certain point but I really don't want to give up on this character, this is also the main reason why I'm making this post, I don't want people to leave this character.
In another note, I completely support the knockback nerf on her lvl1 super, it was very needed considering the big damage/setup potential it had so I don't have any issues with it tbh.
Lastly I want to make clear that I'm not making this as a complain but instead as an analysis and feebdack from someone that has dedicated almost all his time to the least selected character because I want the best for this game and I want to help reach a more true balanced game where every character feels fun to use and fight against, I know there's still a very long way to go but I wanted to give my own opinion about how things feel at the moment.
Every pom player knows very well that even because of her archetype, Pom demands too much to be able to win a round, mostly because it was already quite difficult to have an advantage or hit the opponent to begin with, also she always was one of the characters with the least average damage and the smallest hitboxes in the game except for her C moves that even then are quite easily punishable, and a ''reversal'' that only helps her get back to neutral and sometimes prepare some setups that may or may not be very helpful depending on the matchup.
Anyway, the main point I want to talk about right now is about the new changes to her JC since it is quite remarkable that it is now much more complicated to confirm a combo or even win the neutral unlike other characters that practically don't care about the distance when they get any kind of confirm, specially when some of their moves are even longer than Pom's 2C and can still get pretty big damage from it or do their full combo without problem.
I consulted this topic with several people and I understand that this type of change was made to maintain a more focused style to the use of dogs but what worries me is that pom by herself is no longer a character who has the necessary tools to defend herself or attack properly even with her dogs, also the rewards she gets from almost all her confirms are laughable compared to what everyone else can do on any situation, even on resets and okis.
Although I understand perfectly that she needed some nerfs in some aspects, in my consideration this was not the way to make her a more balanced character, mostly because the way she is now feels frustrating and disappointing to play with, to the point that certain matchups feel now almost impossible to win at high level play like Velvet or Oleander because she now lacks the tools to fight properly a good zoning and any kind of mistake will always cost her almost all her health because the only way to be viable with her right now is by being completely defensive since her offensive setups aren't that good anymore.
In my honest opinion if I could do some changes to her would be that she only needed shorter hitboxes on her JC, make it add more JD and some damage adjustments, even other changes to it instead of making it way slower since this kind of modification makes JC very useless now in all situations (neutral, combos, pressure, exchanges, setups, resets) considering it was her best button but now she has nothing to make the opponent feel worried like at all and I can confirm it too when I played against other poms, she really doesn't feel like a threat anymore, even when she uses her dogs the overhead and sometimes the low pressure is almost non existant unless she is completely close to you which is veeeeeery hard to achieve anyway and the damage is almost never something to worry about.
Sadly after these changes even some pom players have decided to drop her because of how frustrating it has become to play with her, even me at certain point but I really don't want to give up on this character, this is also the main reason why I'm making this post, I don't want people to leave this character.
In another note, I completely support the knockback nerf on her lvl1 super, it was very needed considering the big damage/setup potential it had so I don't have any issues with it tbh.
Lastly I want to make clear that I'm not making this as a complain but instead as an analysis and feebdack from someone that has dedicated almost all his time to the least selected character because I want the best for this game and I want to help reach a more true balanced game where every character feels fun to use and fight against, I know there's still a very long way to go but I wanted to give my own opinion about how things feel at the moment.
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