Kragg now has to basically revolve his game around pulling rock or camping ledge (which they also nerfed) to then create winning situations when the opponent makes major mistakes. This now causes Kragg to play way more defensively since he can not approach safely in neutral (he could never approach safely in neutral).
This is why nair is crucial for Kragg in neutral approaches because Kragg has no safe approach now since nair was his only fully combo starter. Kragg is a character with very large hitboxes for his aerials which is great for killing, BUT for neutral approaches it is awful for him because those large hitboxes are extremely laggy and do not combo, so when Kragg approaches in neutral with his aerials they will only glancing blow a majority of the time since Kragg has zero to minimal actionability during his opponent's hitstun. So Kragg not having a "50% off" neutral win via his nair seems like a fair change, but it is not because of other moves Kragg has. Instead, if Kragg tries to nair at an opponent to approach in neutral the opponent can simply out-disjoint it with just about any move in the game and punish Kragg accordingly. This is why Kragg struggles in neutral and punish now, Kragg can not "genieously" nair for "50% off" neutral and early kills on stage, but by nerfing nair makes it so that Kragg can not rush in during neutral and approach with nair. Additionally, rock can't beat some approaches, and it limits him to only a few defensive tosses that can be played around by a lot of characters. Yes that is the case, Kragg can pull rock, BUT this forces Kragg to pray to god he hits one of his stubby laggy moves in neutral to enable him to pull rock against an opponent applying good safe pressure. Some would argue that the nair change is not a big deal because Kragg could simply hit bair and pull rock so he can have a decent neutral and an improved punish/disadvantage. So now with the change, Kragg has a harder time comboing and a harder time in neutral. So by nerfing nair, in turn nerfs the gimmick Kragg revolves around which is his nair play. Keep in mind that every character has these spammable huge nairs that they can throw out with impunity that now Kragg is getting far less out of.
Additionally, BOTH nair 1 and nair 2 have significantly reduced range in front and behind Kragg, specifically nair 2 being reduced by a huge amount. If you hit the back hit (nair 2&nair 3) it's doing 4% per hit or 8% at most if you want a real followup. With the new nair change now the move still can combo, but it'll do 12% only if you hit nair 1-> nair 4, which doesn't generally work on most characters unless you're far inside of them or they DI in. It also did 6% per hit, meaning most nairs would net 12% and a followup. Kragg's gimmick is nair which originally was an unbeatable frame 5 move that reached far in front of him and continued into nair 2 and 3 which combo'd every character in the game up and into itself on hit. Every character has some sort of projectile/gimmick that revolves around their playstyle.
So why does a nair nerf affect Kragg so much? The reason is because nair is the most important part of Kragg's kit. Now this is nothing new, Kragg has been bad for the past year, but in fairness he has always been bad but easy to use, a format of balancing that made him fun for new players and veterans alike.
#Rivals of aether update#
The last big patch update 2.1.4 that buffed Clairen also nerfed Kragg. Why do I think Kragg took such a plummet from his former glory? The nair change. Who once was a plucky mid tier amongst the Rivals, now sits in the lower to bottom to negative end of the pack.
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