Sorry about my honesty but you talk - especially in the beginning - as if people mostly slept on him and he was hardly affected by balance patches, directly or indirectly (from the balance of other characters) since release, when thats simply not the case. It is a fact he was definitely way weaker on release than he is now compared to other characters. His blood gauge and move properties were crap compared to now and he was overall way riskier to play than he is currently. Its not like the game or the character are - or ever were - complex enough to people not have figured that out, even in the first month, and as if now they supposedly changed their opinion because of their experience with the character and the game. I agree this is what normally happens in fighting games with at least some depth but for Strive it is actually quite the contrary. The gameplay is so shallow and straightforward (in a bad way) that if you ask me most experienced players already solved it in the first week. Speaking for myself, the game in the end still feels exactly the same since release, despite the bells and whistles they dropped in since then. What I can say for a fact is that the final meta was called out by pros already in the beta and its scary how still spot on it is. Nago is top tier right now simply because the devs want it so, choosing him to out-unga what was dominating before him. I wish it was for a different reason but it isnt. Thats all this game was and currently is reduced to and thats why balance patches wont ever save it, just change who is in the spotlight as a result of heavy-handed balancing. Even trying to analyze the game in this state is giving it too much credit imho, since it presumes the game is something to be taken seriously. Only a complete overhaul of its mechanics and finally nerfing that outrageous damage (randomly rewarding people for basically doing nothing) can change it in any meaningful way. Until then youll either be bored to hell winning nonstop if your character is strong, or otherwise coping with losing to other characters BS while trying to find meaning or logic behind it when theres none at all.
"Only a complete overhaul of its mechanics and finally nerfing that outrageous damage can change it in any meaningful way" I agree, turning strive into a completely different game would be a pretty meaningful change.
it's also worth noting that nago has some of the highest round start threat of any character in the entire game in the form of a low commitment kick that's safe on block
I would love to see more breakdown vids like this. It's good to see why a character is considered top tier through action rather than just through word
Nago main day 1 and i gotta be honest, no other character has drawn me in faster than Nago in any FG, ever. What a sick and well designed character. Everything about him just screams cool.
@@V2ULTRAKill oh believe me, I love me some dandy vampire too, mained him Rev2 along with Sin. But i gotta say, Nagoriyuki really filled Slayer's shoes well.
Straight up when my friend was trying to get me into GG he told me about Nago and I was instantly sold, had to main him. His mechanics and design are just so cool and intriguing. Still don't know how people considered him dookie from the get go that was a fun time tho.
Very well explainied. While I'm a complete scrub, Nago was my day 1 pick, mostly because of his charadesign and the fact that explaining he was an Afro Cyber Vampire (dandy) Samurai always made me laugh. I remember when people used to say his trade wasn't worth (easy special comboing versus blood gauge pressure and no dash) but, as a Vaseraga player in GBVS, I always thought he was ideal to play and his chipping on normals was quite god like. Anyway, great video, I like that your editing is not crowded/interupted with/by silly meme graphics and you don't seem to be playing a role. It's nice and clean and to the point. Good work.
Something that LK only sort of touches on/implies is that it's specifically the combination of high health+high damage & high consistency that makes Nago top tier. What this means is that whenever Nago scores a hit, whatever that hit might be, he's doing 60%+ of your HP. However, when you're right, even if you have similar damage output you're not going to be doing the same percentage of Nago's HP. This means that if you're both winning neutral the same number of times in a match, Nago will *always* win. It's just math. I don't think I have to explain why being able to ALWAYS win if the game devolves into a slugfest is incredibly powerful. What puts him over similar characters like GL & Potemkin however is the fact that unlike those two, as LK noted, Nago's neutral is actually good. Take Potemkin damage output & durability and take away the one thing that makes Potemkin balanced (mediocre neutral) and you have yourself a top tier.
Exactly, he’s designed to get easy hits that turn into combos that do incredible damage. He’s so dangerous that even him camping is a serious threat. Even blood rage doesn’t do as much damage as advertised because his remaining health activates guts and allows him full access to his specials again. Simply put, the character is overpowered in basic ways that make him borderline, if not outright, unfair.
I get that Nago is supposed to be a “one hit” archetype character who does massive damage. IMO the problem is it’s waaaaaay too easy to get that one hit
Yeah it even says "One Shot" as his type on the character select screen. He only needs to touch you once to convert into big damage, and he only needs to convert twice to win. If he didn't have that blood gauge, even with all the other weaknesses, he'd be *totally* busted.
Not only is it common to get that one hit, but he has so many options that make him a fuck it why not try style. Yall are spread far apart? Fuck it beyblade at him, what's gonna happen? He gets hit and you kill him, they block it and you're safe and dash away. But but but... nago gets blood. Yea he can then play keep away and mash heavy slash until it lowers a little then he can spin again. The most baffling part to me is why the hell did they buff his 2S to be that fast lmfao. People mashed it already, but now it's hilariously crazy.
@@limitedbom2206 fuck that, Fukyo into Fukyo into back Fukyo into Fukyo into command grab. Salty Nago players complain about not having a dash when they literally have 2 better dashes that can pseudo cancel into eachother.
The other problem being that for being a "one shot" character, he really could just keep chaining his moves into one another that stacks damage up too quickly (not to mention his reach, big ass hitboxes & the corner carry potential). And no, I'm not salty. Saying this as a day-1 Nago main before my main, Baiken is back.
@@own492 Seeing your comment reminded me the reasons on why i left this community. Got hyped a bit because of bridget's new trailer but now i realized that it would be the best if i avoided playing the game.
I don't really have much to add for gameplay... You covered him perfectly I'm just happy we get a black character in a modern fighting game that's unambiguously cool and badass. Nago means a lot to me, even if I don't really compete at high levels of play...
The way I defined top tiers in the last patch was "a group of characters who's weaknesses are that they are resource management characters that don't have to manage resources and with the added benefit of being able to deny 1 or more system mechanics" this still pretty much applies. Also I was one of the people that thought Nago was mid on release, but in my defense, my opinion was based on what I knew about him from the beta. His blood has gotten progressively easier to manage every patch/release.
Yeah, basically everyone thought he was mid because of the beta. Tbh, I didn't even understand him as a char until his full release, so I can't really say whether he was good or not before release.
I didn’t even know Guilty Gear existed. Then I saw the Nago reveal trailer and that the game was made by ArcSys. He looked so awesome I knew right away I would main him. Now people hate me because he is top tier. I’d still play him even if he got nerfed tho.
Great video! I'd love to see this kind of video for other Top tiers too, I think that would be interesting. You might also add a section about ways to fight against them as well.
Hey LK, thanks for the great vid. I've played Melee for a long time but I've been slowly poking away at the tutorials for a month and was thinking of playing Nago. Appreciate all the good Strive videos!
shoutout to the editing in this video, really put together well and engaging (coming from previous LK talking head videos or simple edit compilations, which are still good videos)
While every thing you said is true, I feel like what really makes Nago a cut above is how every single thing is a frametrap so long as he has blood. Button > Spin or Button > DP or Spin > DP or Button/Spin/Clone > Back Fukyo > Button or Clone > plus frames. He doesn't have to end his turn if he doesn't want to. Good Nago players can sometimes get you in a situation where you have to block the bloodsplosion, which is much harder to punish if you actually block instead of avoid it. And the blood mechanic can, in some situations, work out as a free burst and freeze frame, which are minor annoyances. Alongside all of this, his good neutral buttons - which you touched on - can't be beat by 6P. So he's quite strong no matter where he is on the screen. I feel like have to make more correct reads on defense against Nago than most other characters.
@@galtar862 I didn’t say you couldn’t punish it, I said it was harder to punish than it should be. The point is that the blood pop is not nearly as risky as it probably should be, so much so that top level Nago play at the moment is more or less revolves around pop setups in the corner.
Tbh I feel like he's kinda designed like a glass cannon character, with the cannon being his obvious offensive potency and the glass being losing half your health at minimum if you choke. Only "problem" is since you can control the pop to a certain degree, and since he has the highest health in the game, he ends up being less of a glass cannon and more of an ordinary cannon. Personally I think he was at his best in 1.0. Then with the first major update came the f.SSS blood reduction buff and since then there's been a push to increase his ease of use without compromising his potency, which gets pushed alongside the players developing more and more countermeasures to his biggest trade off. I'm not sure if it's good or bad design, and I still enjoy playing him when I do, but he has a little too much potential for "head empty" offense nowadays for my taste.
I do not miss 1.0 Nago at all. I think his current buffs to his normals while at higher bloodlevel is stupid, but on release Nago did not feel good to play. The uppercut was never good unless cancelled, the clone was pointless, SSS was pointless as an option. More character should become Nago like in their moves being versatile and good.
the best thing they did was make beyblade minus. now he has to spend blood to RPS, whereas before he didn't have to spend any. makes the match-up a lot more manageable.
any other nago players feel pain when he was doing his fukyo spam? I'm referring to the fact that if you hold kick while doing a fukyo, you can just do a forward or back input to easy chain fukyo's.
I think the big problem with Nago is how he interacts with round start position and the damage in the game. He doesn’t just have options for round start, he has a tool for almost everything at that range and it all leads into a full combo for over half your life and corner carry/wall break. Round start against Nago is terrifying because risk/reward is always in his favor. If you win, you get damage and have to play neutral against him; if he wins, that’s basically the game unless you beat the next mix up. You have to burst him on his first combo or you lose, and he is a relatively hard character to burst sometimes. I don’t know if Nago is actually top 1 rn when HC still gets his win con from burst, but they’re both definitely top tier.
Bro lk is just so chill. I can't describe it but this is just calming to watch I'm not even playing strive right now but I watch these videos in case I feel like it
Good vid overall, but just under half of it is spent saying "Nago has lots of effective health" and going into a bit tooo much detail on how that's calculated. It's not useless info it just feels a bit tangential to the point of the vid.
Especially when at the end, LK mentions Nago's command grab as his win condition and then doesn't explain any further. It would be nice to have at least a short explanation on how the blood drain works, and how that allows Nago to do insane pressure for however many seconds it lasts.
You can not calculate EHP like this, because guts has breakpoints. If i hit someone with a 100 dmg super before the next level of guts kicks in i will reduce his hp more than if he had a little hp less. This whole guts thing is really unnecessarily complicated.
@@absoul112 or like me you just saw the highest HP in the game with very good damage/range and figured once people learned not to pop he'd be really good 🤷♂
In my dream world, Nago's bite would do just a little damage like Slayer's did, and his normals would only start chipping at lvl 2 blood. Beyblade wouldn't be able to anti air too.
At release I thought he'd be a mid-tier at best too, but not exactly due to his system limitations. I thought his pressure would get "solved" as the game aged. Even though his damage and range were insane you'd be able to OS most if not all of his pressure. And then they buffed him for 2 patches straight and I realized I had grossly misjudged how scary even a mid-dispenser (as you call it) can be. lol
14 frames is technically reactable, it's like 233 ms. That's above median human reaction time. It's reactable in theory, it's just very hard because he has other options.
@@Phychologik Also keep in mind that unless you're actively looking for it, there will always be a reaction delay. Even if you do happen to be looking for it, it leaves you open to other options. Technically vs. Practically react-able is actually quite a big difference.
His gameplan is strikethrow, sure. But he also does damage on a blocked strike, unless you want to spend the meter. Which you should, just be careful about it. Also 6p and 6k mean that he has a pretty big advantage at round start. One beats higher hitboxes, the other beats lower hitboxes. Add that to the easy combo game for big damage, and you can get blown up very quickly. To quote an anti nago guide "don't fight this man at roundstart. You have to safely build space to force him to spend blood to get in." While that's a cool design that your supposed to exploit to fight him, it's still very strong for a high health high damage to essentially start the game in an advantageous state.
I love Nagoriyuki. Dude is so cool. But the difference I feel when I play him vs when I play Millia is staggering and that's just the way it goes. They're two difference sides of the spectrum and I can't really speak for Millia because I am not really at the same level with her as Nago but I still think that Nago ought to be put in more of a losing state when he pops Blood Rage.
As a beginner, holy shit playing against nago is infuriating. I feel like I can't react to his dashes, he covers so much ground in so little time while getting not even a bar of blood, gets in your face with so much ease, has a near endless pressure string, which forces you to always be on a lookout for a 50-50 command grab scenario, and if you screw up, that's >50% hp. Also his overhead slash also hits the ground, like, cmon man.
I think this is because you are a beginner. You can literally always react to his dash if he does it on block, you can always beat it with a grab or at least 5p say. The mZan hasn't a single overhead except for universal dust attack so I don't now what your referring to. If you mean 6h it's not an overhead. His seemingly never ending pressure is the thing I'll agree with you the most on, but it's actually far from it as without using expensive special moves it becomes really predictable and easy to beat. With using special moves he will actually quickly build blood as he only gets 4 before he pops, or if he's high he actually doesn't get much of a combo as he'll pop if he goes for one. Considering you are just a beginner stop spreading this stuff and brewing resentment online. If you wanna talk about a painful character to defend against defending against a good I-no is an extremely grueling experience. You are not blocking against that character.
Thanks for the explanation, I kept wondering why I was always getting hit by that bayblade, good to know it comes out abd hits faster than humans can react. So basically if you are not blocking when it comes out you got hit. No reacting to it.
You didn't mention that his "grab" is actually a command grab, so you can't tech it, it beats normal grabs. You have to jump, backdash or interrupt it. All of which require a bit of a guess, an educated guess that you can mitigate by using FD and watching for the times when he CAN grab, but still at the end of the day you can't react to bite, you have to guess or fuzzy jump if you have that down.
It's not a command grab, it just has longer grab range like Pot. It's completely unwarranted but hey, heavies have all sorts of unwarranted privileges in this game....
@LordKnight Does changing between GUTS ranges apply during a combo, or only after the opponent recovers? So if my first hit takes you under 70% but I continue the combo after that, is the GUTS multiplier applying during the entire combo?
only after the opponent recovers. There's an old term called guts busting where you optimize your combo around killing the opponent before GUTS can really kick in especially on low/red health.
Good video, but if you do another like this, you may consider structuring it differently. You spent about 5 minutes on this one - nearly half the video - explaining the basics of health. Nago's health is important, but it's not something that's central to his identity as a top tier. If you want to explain why a character is top tier, it may be better to structure the video as if you are explaining the thought process of a typical match versus Nago, as it happens. So maybe something like this: Talking about his round start coverage and reward (using the opportunity to say that his damage is very high) > his pressure and what makes it scary (can't escape easily until he's high on blood, have to guess strike or throw, talk about how rewarding both are) > talk about trying to take your turn back (how even glancing blows get him blood back to run another bit of mix) > his HP and neutral tools (hard to kill him, all his buttons are insanely strong so his lack of mobility doesn't really matter so much unless you're a zoner) > assorted privileges he has that just makes everything else worse (such as comboing into blood rage mix, or the freeze frame after blood rage ends, or the neutral skips he can use once it does).
This kind of structure does a good job at explaining not only *what* you must do to beat him, but also why - despite the flaws - it's still the best we can really manage against the character. And, as a consequence, explains what truly makes the character top tier: he tends to force you into awful situations in the game where your counterplay options are all difficult and/or highly risky.
Tbh I'm all for Nago being top tier cuz he does have alot of limitations and some complexity to a certain degree but if he's gonna be this boss character I atleast want a few more counterplays to his kit. Maybe being able to 6P his projectile like May's, reducing active frames from his dp so we can backdash if he delays etc. Ofcourse these are just examples I just thought of on the spot, I know iad is a good option against his projectile (just mentioning this before a Nago main comes to reply with it in a condescending manner) and season 2 did gave us counterplay to Beyblade but as we can all see its clearly not enough. I'm not for completely nerfing characters to the ground but when a character can easily force situations that favours them without multiple things to worry about there's always going to be problems.
I think Day 1 Nago wasn't overpowered...but clone buff and f.SSS buff turned him into a powerhouse. DP was also pretty trash. Nago day 1 needed help but high health, high conversion, good neutral buttons and strong strike throw mix makes a top tier. Sure his air mobility is trash and sure his defensive options aren't brain dead but if they we're he'd be beyond broken. I honestly thought they would nerf clone but instead "nerfed" 👀🤷🏿♂️😂😂 beyblade lol
I think that Nago's design and counterplay are just not very fun to play against or interact with (like Chaos). The gameplan I commonly see against Nago is "either win round start and go ham or wait for 2.5 blood". This would be fine except, unlike Sin Kiske (who I firmly believe is very much better designed as a meter management character), the command grab essentially forces you to gamble on his terms. Now this would also be ok if at max range he could be zoned out, but as discussed in the video, he cannot at low blood. This would also be fine except in season 2, meter gain is reduced and therefore Nago can keep running his gameplan. Let's also not forget guard crush state when he pops (compared to Sin who just sits there and is ready to die). Overall it feels like this character has a convoluted counterplay plan that requires the enemy to mess up and get to high blood OR you flip a coin (which is also in his favor even if you win the coin flip because of guts). I'd like to see so many things changed about this character subjectively, however to be more fair, I think blood gain needs to be bigger. These moves are too strong (and rightfully so), but the cost of using them often feels like its irrelevant. If they increase blood gain, you see these big moves less and there is more thoughtfulness of when to spend blood or not
I think the zoning that the characters can do to him and lack of air dash justify the reduced blood. before the buffs you could walk all over him due to his limited movement as a whole.
The cost to use specials is enormous unless you get bit and he gets the big boy blood refund. Appropriate use of FD, checking/jumping the dash ins, and back dashing in the gaps of some strings of his strings has made it pretty rare that I get bit. I played nago a bunch before switching to May tho, so admittedly I know most of the shit nagos go for. I can imagine it being tough for characters that can’t feasibly whiff punish or draw out wasted specials tho.
I still hate him more than HC. It’s probably because I’ve been a Gio main since day 1 and nago players mash so much that it makes me want to throw up, and they still haven’t changed.
Thats called using a strategy against gio which works. What I usually do against gio is that I purposely put my blood meter at lvl 2 and put some distance between myself and her, then I just wait until she runs towards me and right before she’s within the range to hit me, I fukyo back and do 5H. Of course it’s not that gio just runs towards me, player tries to bait me but I just have to be patient, because if I’m not, I’ll just pop.
Let's also not forget the absolute chaos that is f.SSS, both on block AND on hit. Shit takes nearly a bar of blood away on block, and roughly about a bar and a quarter on hit. That sounds bonkers already, but what if I told you that you can STACK THIS BS? Yup, you can stack f.SSS blood mitigation just by doing RC and repeating the processes. It's genuinely criminal. God this character is a war crime, but goddamn it that's my boy.
His system weaknesses are exactly why i dropped him after a year. When they removed red rc scaling, nerfed a bunch of things and let the cast deal as much damage as Nago without the limitation his -oneshot- tag lost all value to me. Hes top tier sure for the same 5 Nago players, but a year of not double jumping, dash breaking, air dashing just really opened up how frustrating he has become for me. Moved to Gio, good break down, will like.
Nago is one of the most consistent though at least. Full combo off a normal 5P. Full combo off a normal 5k. Even if pretty much all characters in this game can do high damage combos, most are very reliant on either a counter hit or AA hit (like Faust with his 5k), whereas Nago just has to hit *something* to do big damage. But yeah, I guess having weird movement options due to the lack of a double jump or dash can get tedious unless you're into the whole heavy character archetype.
He's already a pretty braindead character. Not to say that all Nago mains are braindead - there are plenty of good, smart Nago mains. But plenty of people can get him to celestial without turning their brain on once.
The main reason people slept on him early on is that he wasn't nearly as good - and Sol and Ram were a lot better. If you wanted to win on release you were playing Fair Far Slash Frederick.
I THINK seriusly is not top tier anymore , there are too many characters with feint , dash , priority , dp , too make them safe after a rushdown setup , and rage meter build too fast for nothing
Its true nago can confirm off almost anything but we have to take care not to forget that he has to spend resources to do so in a lot of situations. Hes definitely strong though, cool af too.
Sorry about my honesty but you talk - especially in the beginning - as if people mostly slept on him and he was hardly affected by balance patches, directly or indirectly (from the balance of other characters) since release, when thats simply not the case. It is a fact he was definitely way weaker on release than he is now compared to other characters. His blood gauge and move properties were crap compared to now and he was overall way riskier to play than he is currently.
Its not like the game or the character are - or ever were - complex enough to people not have figured that out, even in the first month, and as if now they supposedly changed their opinion because of their experience with the character and the game. I agree this is what normally happens in fighting games with at least some depth but for Strive it is actually quite the contrary.
The gameplay is so shallow and straightforward (in a bad way) that if you ask me most experienced players already solved it in the first week. Speaking for myself, the game in the end still feels exactly the same since release, despite the bells and whistles they dropped in since then. What I can say for a fact is that the final meta was called out by pros already in the beta and its scary how still spot on it is.
Nago is top tier right now simply because the devs want it so, choosing him to out-unga what was dominating before him. I wish it was for a different reason but it isnt. Thats all this game was and currently is reduced to and thats why balance patches wont ever save it, just change who is in the spotlight as a result of heavy-handed balancing. Even trying to analyze the game in this state is giving it too much credit imho, since it presumes the game is something to be taken seriously.
Only a complete overhaul of its mechanics and finally nerfing that outrageous damage (randomly rewarding people for basically doing nothing) can change it in any meaningful way. Until then youll either be bored to hell winning nonstop if your character is strong, or otherwise coping with losing to other characters BS while trying to find meaning or logic behind it when theres none at all.
salt post
@@LordKnightfgc thats it for argument? truth hurts huh?
"Only a complete overhaul of its mechanics and finally nerfing that outrageous damage can change it in any meaningful way" I agree, turning strive into a completely different game would be a pretty meaningful change.
The post makes me think you just dont like the game. Which is fine.
what the fuck
As a Nago main since day 1 and no one else, I had no idea this game had a dash button.
when I was just doing 5k 6H at launch with nago and got into celestial, I knew he was slept on
Potemkin mains can relate
Same I tried other people for a few games and was confused when I could jump around
I know you're capping because majority of Nagoriyuki players I play against and see auto backdash on wake-up, I know you can't help yourselves /s
You can backdash dude. It's faster than hitting 44.
they really need to let you set a blood level for nago in training mode like you can with GLD's security meter
please god
It's been an entire year and you can't do it lol
Testing lvl 2 combos is a major pain in the ass. It's such an easy fix ;-;
Bruuuhhhh you speaking to my soul.
it's also worth noting that nago has some of the highest round start threat of any character in the entire game in the form of a low commitment kick that's safe on block
Not only safe on block, 0 on block
Wallbreak off anything from roundstart is goated
The higher in rank you go the less you will see people challenge nago on roundstart unless you have a 10 frame far slash
@@SmileGayming which is safe?
Slayer
I would love to see more breakdown vids like this. It's good to see why a character is considered top tier through action rather than just through word
Nago main day 1 and i gotta be honest, no other character has drawn me in faster than Nago in any FG, ever. What a sick and well designed character. Everything about him just screams cool.
ok but hear me out
Slayer
@@V2ULTRAKill oh believe me, I love me some dandy vampire too, mained him Rev2 along with Sin. But i gotta say, Nagoriyuki really filled Slayer's shoes well.
Straight up when my friend was trying to get me into GG he told me about Nago and I was instantly sold, had to main him. His mechanics and design are just so cool and intriguing. Still don't know how people considered him dookie from the get go that was a fun time tho.
Very well explainied. While I'm a complete scrub, Nago was my day 1 pick, mostly because of his charadesign and the fact that explaining he was an Afro Cyber Vampire (dandy) Samurai always made me laugh. I remember when people used to say his trade wasn't worth (easy special comboing versus blood gauge pressure and no dash) but, as a Vaseraga player in GBVS, I always thought he was ideal to play and his chipping on normals was quite god like.
Anyway, great video, I like that your editing is not crowded/interupted with/by silly meme graphics and you don't seem to be playing a role. It's nice and clean and to the point. Good work.
Something that LK only sort of touches on/implies is that it's specifically the combination of high health+high damage & high consistency that makes Nago top tier. What this means is that whenever Nago scores a hit, whatever that hit might be, he's doing 60%+ of your HP. However, when you're right, even if you have similar damage output you're not going to be doing the same percentage of Nago's HP. This means that if you're both winning neutral the same number of times in a match, Nago will *always* win. It's just math. I don't think I have to explain why being able to ALWAYS win if the game devolves into a slugfest is incredibly powerful. What puts him over similar characters like GL & Potemkin however is the fact that unlike those two, as LK noted, Nago's neutral is actually good. Take Potemkin damage output & durability and take away the one thing that makes Potemkin balanced (mediocre neutral) and you have yourself a top tier.
Exactly, he’s designed to get easy hits that turn into combos that do incredible damage. He’s so dangerous that even him camping is a serious threat. Even blood rage doesn’t do as much damage as advertised because his remaining health activates guts and allows him full access to his specials again. Simply put, the character is overpowered in basic ways that make him borderline, if not outright, unfair.
I get that Nago is supposed to be a “one hit” archetype character who does massive damage. IMO the problem is it’s waaaaaay too easy to get that one hit
Yeah it even says "One Shot" as his type on the character select screen. He only needs to touch you once to convert into big damage, and he only needs to convert twice to win. If he didn't have that blood gauge, even with all the other weaknesses, he'd be *totally* busted.
Not only is it common to get that one hit, but he has so many options that make him a fuck it why not try style. Yall are spread far apart? Fuck it beyblade at him, what's gonna happen? He gets hit and you kill him, they block it and you're safe and dash away. But but but... nago gets blood. Yea he can then play keep away and mash heavy slash until it lowers a little then he can spin again. The most baffling part to me is why the hell did they buff his 2S to be that fast lmfao. People mashed it already, but now it's hilariously crazy.
@@limitedbom2206 fuck that, Fukyo into Fukyo into back Fukyo into Fukyo into command grab.
Salty Nago players complain about not having a dash when they literally have 2 better dashes that can pseudo cancel into eachother.
The other problem being that for being a "one shot" character, he really could just keep chaining his moves into one another that stacks damage up too quickly (not to mention his reach, big ass hitboxes & the corner carry potential). And no, I'm not salty. Saying this as a day-1 Nago main before my main, Baiken is back.
@@own492
Seeing your comment reminded me the reasons on why i left this community. Got hyped a bit because of bridget's new trailer but now i realized that it would be the best if i avoided playing the game.
wether nagoriyuki is top, mid or low tier.... his design is beyond god tier.
I don't really have much to add for gameplay... You covered him perfectly
I'm just happy we get a black character in a modern fighting game that's unambiguously cool and badass. Nago means a lot to me, even if I don't really compete at high levels of play...
That's how I feel bout Kimberly in SF6!! Keep it coming Japan
@@willlast2015 Just need to fix her _Physiology._
Same goes for the other newcomer.
@@Berd-Wasted. you mean her gigantic forehead or rather 14head
@@Berd-Wasted. What do you mean?
The way I defined top tiers in the last patch was "a group of characters who's weaknesses are that they are resource management characters that don't have to manage resources and with the added benefit of being able to deny 1 or more system mechanics" this still pretty much applies.
Also I was one of the people that thought Nago was mid on release, but in my defense, my opinion was based on what I knew about him from the beta. His blood has gotten progressively easier to manage every patch/release.
Yeah, basically everyone thought he was mid because of the beta. Tbh, I didn't even understand him as a char until his full release, so I can't really say whether he was good or not before release.
I think that his damage output of 2 life bars per second kinda helps
one chipp per second.
@@AchedSphinx this should be the new GG damage meter. "how many CPS is that combo?"
O
M
G
XD
Nago is awesome. Sickest design in the game and he's really fun to play. I've checked out other characters but I keep coming back.
I didn’t even know Guilty Gear existed. Then I saw the Nago reveal trailer and that the game was made by ArcSys. He looked so awesome I knew right away I would main him. Now people hate me because he is top tier. I’d still play him even if he got nerfed tho.
Great video! I'd love to see this kind of video for other Top tiers too, I think that would be interesting. You might also add a section about ways to fight against them as well.
Hey LK, thanks for the great vid. I've played Melee for a long time but I've been slowly poking away at the tutorials for a month and was thinking of playing Nago. Appreciate all the good Strive videos!
shoutout to the editing in this video, really put together well and engaging (coming from previous LK talking head videos or simple edit compilations, which are still good videos)
While every thing you said is true, I feel like what really makes Nago a cut above is how every single thing is a frametrap so long as he has blood. Button > Spin or Button > DP or Spin > DP or Button/Spin/Clone > Back Fukyo > Button or Clone > plus frames. He doesn't have to end his turn if he doesn't want to. Good Nago players can sometimes get you in a situation where you have to block the bloodsplosion, which is much harder to punish if you actually block instead of avoid it. And the blood mechanic can, in some situations, work out as a free burst and freeze frame, which are minor annoyances. Alongside all of this, his good neutral buttons - which you touched on - can't be beat by 6P. So he's quite strong no matter where he is on the screen. I feel like have to make more correct reads on defense against Nago than most other characters.
Bloodsplosion is -10 OB now with next to no pushback so you should really never not get a punish on it
@@galtar862 I didn’t say you couldn’t punish it, I said it was harder to punish than it should be. The point is that the blood pop is not nearly as risky as it probably should be, so much so that top level Nago play at the moment is more or less revolves around pop setups in the corner.
Tbh I feel like he's kinda designed like a glass cannon character, with the cannon being his obvious offensive potency and the glass being losing half your health at minimum if you choke. Only "problem" is since you can control the pop to a certain degree, and since he has the highest health in the game, he ends up being less of a glass cannon and more of an ordinary cannon.
Personally I think he was at his best in 1.0. Then with the first major update came the f.SSS blood reduction buff and since then there's been a push to increase his ease of use without compromising his potency, which gets pushed alongside the players developing more and more countermeasures to his biggest trade off. I'm not sure if it's good or bad design, and I still enjoy playing him when I do, but he has a little too much potential for "head empty" offense nowadays for my taste.
I do not miss 1.0 Nago at all. I think his current buffs to his normals while at higher bloodlevel is stupid, but on release Nago did not feel good to play.
The uppercut was never good unless cancelled, the clone was pointless, SSS was pointless as an option.
More character should become Nago like in their moves being versatile and good.
the best thing they did was make beyblade minus. now he has to spend blood to RPS, whereas before he didn't have to spend any. makes the match-up a lot more manageable.
He's tankier than pot though D:
any other nago players feel pain when he was doing his fukyo spam? I'm referring to the fact that if you hold kick while doing a fukyo, you can just do a forward or back input to easy chain fukyo's.
I think his greatest advantage is that he's fun to play. God I love this character.
When i saw Nago in the beta and people complained that he is such a bad character i just shook my head.....
I think the big problem with Nago is how he interacts with round start position and the damage in the game. He doesn’t just have options for round start, he has a tool for almost everything at that range and it all leads into a full combo for over half your life and corner carry/wall break. Round start against Nago is terrifying because risk/reward is always in his favor. If you win, you get damage and have to play neutral against him; if he wins, that’s basically the game unless you beat the next mix up. You have to burst him on his first combo or you lose, and he is a relatively hard character to burst sometimes.
I don’t know if Nago is actually top 1 rn when HC still gets his win con from burst, but they’re both definitely top tier.
Talking about broly he's so funny because he's a grappler that's also the best zoner. Which is just hilarious
Bro lk is just so chill. I can't describe it but this is just calming to watch I'm not even playing strive right now but I watch these videos in case I feel like it
yesterday i had some matches with a nago and i never felt more threatren in my life. the fact that his 6H clashes with tyrant rave has changed me.
Good vid overall, but just under half of it is spent saying "Nago has lots of effective health" and going into a bit tooo much detail on how that's calculated. It's not useless info it just feels a bit tangential to the point of the vid.
As someone who doesn't know how health works in ggs it was pretty helpful
Especially when at the end, LK mentions Nago's command grab as his win condition and then doesn't explain any further. It would be nice to have at least a short explanation on how the blood drain works, and how that allows Nago to do insane pressure for however many seconds it lasts.
He's explaning why he's strong, big HP is a factor, and just explain how hp works since is not only Nago who benefits from that
You can not calculate EHP like this, because guts has breakpoints. If i hit someone with a 100 dmg super before the next level of guts kicks in i will reduce his hp more than if he had a little hp less. This whole guts thing is really unnecessarily complicated.
Nago was one of the best right from launch. Then he got buffed because people downplayed him. Then he got buffed more.
He needs it
How did ppl think that he's mid? This is a godly kit
Nb4 comments come in all telling how they were special and knew his potential from the start
You know, like a liar… or they guessed.
@@absoul112 or like me you just saw the highest HP in the game with very good damage/range and figured once people learned not to pop he'd be really good 🤷♂
@@roar104 that’s why I put “or they guessed”
@@absoul112 not really a guess when all the signs are there he's going to end up top tier.
@@roar104 you thought he had potential and were correct. If the writing were on the wall from the start, then everyone would’ve thought the same.
In my dream world, Nago's bite would do just a little damage like Slayer's did, and his normals would only start chipping at lvl 2 blood. Beyblade wouldn't be able to anti air too.
look at xrd wild throw then look at strive wild throw. This is Slayer's bite strive-ified
At release I thought he'd be a mid-tier at best too, but not exactly due to his system limitations. I thought his pressure would get "solved" as the game aged. Even though his damage and range were insane you'd be able to OS most if not all of his pressure. And then they buffed him for 2 patches straight and I realized I had grossly misjudged how scary even a mid-dispenser (as you call it) can be. lol
I know nothing of Guilty Gear, but I respect all of you Guilty Gear players.
I hope to see you guys at CEOtaku and I’ll be rooting for some of y’all.
This is the first guilty gear I've played from the start really interesting seeing a character go from weak to super strong the way nago did
3:07 can’t you see I’m blazing!
thumbnail kinda poppin today 👀
14 frames is technically reactable, it's like 233 ms. That's above median human reaction time. It's reactable in theory, it's just very hard because he has other options.
input delay too though.
@@DctrBread oh yeah probably not then ur right
@@Phychologik Also keep in mind that unless you're actively looking for it, there will always be a reaction delay. Even if you do happen to be looking for it, it leaves you open to other options. Technically vs. Practically react-able is actually quite a big difference.
Just bought the game. Nago just appeals to me.
Love these types of videos!
This guys seems like he's a mix of Frank West and Arthur's armor from Marvel 3
I don't play gg just like it and for someone who doesn't play you really explain it well
My main problem is his clone. It’s literally skip neutral into rps.
this video is mixed mad quiet. maybe add some compression?? the sound levels will stay relatively close but it will make things louder
I really want to see a video like this about Gold Lewis I need to learn to understand the character help help
I always wondered why that superboss in arcade mode was virtually impossible unless you cheesed him
Even as a Nagoriyuki main, if in 3-4 years his bloodrage is entirely unchanged I'll be surprised (but grateful)
I think you should do this with every character. That'd be kinda cool
His gameplan is strikethrow, sure. But he also does damage on a blocked strike, unless you want to spend the meter.
Which you should, just be careful about it.
Also 6p and 6k mean that he has a pretty big advantage at round start. One beats higher hitboxes, the other beats lower hitboxes. Add that to the easy combo game for big damage, and you can get blown up very quickly.
To quote an anti nago guide "don't fight this man at roundstart. You have to safely build space to force him to spend blood to get in."
While that's a cool design that your supposed to exploit to fight him, it's still very strong for a high health high damage to essentially start the game in an advantageous state.
I love Nagoriyuki. Dude is so cool. But the difference I feel when I play him vs when I play Millia is staggering and that's just the way it goes. They're two difference sides of the spectrum and I can't really speak for Millia because I am not really at the same level with her as Nago but I still think that Nago ought to be put in more of a losing state when he pops Blood Rage.
As a beginner, holy shit playing against nago is infuriating. I feel like I can't react to his dashes, he covers so much ground in so little time while getting not even a bar of blood, gets in your face with so much ease, has a near endless pressure string, which forces you to always be on a lookout for a 50-50 command grab scenario, and if you screw up, that's >50% hp. Also his overhead slash also hits the ground, like, cmon man.
I think this is because you are a beginner. You can literally always react to his dash if he does it on block, you can always beat it with a grab or at least 5p say.
The mZan hasn't a single overhead except for universal dust attack so I don't now what your referring to. If you mean 6h it's not an overhead.
His seemingly never ending pressure is the thing I'll agree with you the most on, but it's actually far from it as without using expensive special moves it becomes really predictable and easy to beat. With using special moves he will actually quickly build blood as he only gets 4 before he pops, or if he's high he actually doesn't get much of a combo as he'll pop if he goes for one.
Considering you are just a beginner stop spreading this stuff and brewing resentment online.
If you wanna talk about a painful character to defend against defending against a good I-no is an extremely grueling experience. You are not blocking against that character.
@@thegreytowel9237 "stop spreading this stuff online" "anyways ino is a painful character to deal with"
The hypocrisy
all of that plus he looks cool af.
Hey LordKnight, How do I whiff punish Nago's 2S? I just bought Guilty Gear Xrd last week and the matchup is pretty hard for Ky
Thanks for the explanation, I kept wondering why I was always getting hit by that bayblade, good to know it comes out abd hits faster than humans can react. So basically if you are not blocking when it comes out you got hit. No reacting to it.
I've always wondered why some players double tap their buttons. Is it a holdover from some mechanic in an old game or just a habit?
It's usually a habit from playing older games with less generous buffer systems
Yep old games had awful small buffers.
You didn't mention that his "grab" is actually a command grab, so you can't tech it, it beats normal grabs. You have to jump, backdash or interrupt it. All of which require a bit of a guess, an educated guess that you can mitigate by using FD and watching for the times when he CAN grab, but still at the end of the day you can't react to bite, you have to guess or fuzzy jump if you have that down.
It's not a command grab, it just has longer grab range like Pot. It's completely unwarranted but hey, heavies have all sorts of unwarranted privileges in this game....
@@yasagani nago has a command grab and it empties the blood bar so he gets to go ham for a while again
@LordKnight Does changing between GUTS ranges apply during a combo, or only after the opponent recovers? So if my first hit takes you under 70% but I continue the combo after that, is the GUTS multiplier applying during the entire combo?
only after the opponent recovers.
There's an old term called guts busting where you optimize your combo around killing the opponent before GUTS can really kick in especially on low/red health.
I'm so sad that they nerf his standing H it used to go almost fullscreen
420 bullshit blaze it.
I always appreciate these types of breakdowns
You can hold K to do insanely fast fuukyo's btw
A decent Nago player won't even let you play the game 😃
I dislike fighting Nago but I'll take a Nago every day over a Pot or a Faust. Something about those two just start opening my salt valve haha.
i respect the chopper plush
Only commenting before the spelling error correction. Also, Nago main. I am very intelligent.
He's carrying me through ladder ngl.
I thought nago was really bad until I played arcade. Then I had to go to therapy.
Good video, but if you do another like this, you may consider structuring it differently.
You spent about 5 minutes on this one - nearly half the video - explaining the basics of health. Nago's health is important, but it's not something that's central to his identity as a top tier.
If you want to explain why a character is top tier, it may be better to structure the video as if you are explaining the thought process of a typical match versus Nago, as it happens. So maybe something like this:
Talking about his round start coverage and reward (using the opportunity to say that his damage is very high) > his pressure and what makes it scary (can't escape easily until he's high on blood, have to guess strike or throw, talk about how rewarding both are) > talk about trying to take your turn back (how even glancing blows get him blood back to run another bit of mix) > his HP and neutral tools (hard to kill him, all his buttons are insanely strong so his lack of mobility doesn't really matter so much unless you're a zoner) > assorted privileges he has that just makes everything else worse (such as comboing into blood rage mix, or the freeze frame after blood rage ends, or the neutral skips he can use once it does).
This kind of structure does a good job at explaining not only *what* you must do to beat him, but also why - despite the flaws - it's still the best we can really manage against the character. And, as a consequence, explains what truly makes the character top tier: he tends to force you into awful situations in the game where your counterplay options are all difficult and/or highly risky.
Besides all of that he is just damn fun to play :D
THERE WAS A DASH IN STRIVE!?!?
Tbh I'm all for Nago being top tier cuz he does have alot of limitations and some complexity to a certain degree but if he's gonna be this boss character I atleast want a few more counterplays to his kit. Maybe being able to 6P his projectile like May's, reducing active frames from his dp so we can backdash if he delays etc. Ofcourse these are just examples I just thought of on the spot, I know iad is a good option against his projectile (just mentioning this before a Nago main comes to reply with it in a condescending manner) and season 2 did gave us counterplay to Beyblade but as we can all see its clearly not enough. I'm not for completely nerfing characters to the ground but when a character can easily force situations that favours them without multiple things to worry about there's always going to be problems.
He can say the N word
Happy Chaos would also say the N-word, so he is also top tier
Anyone can say it
@@Guitar-Dog 🤨
@@Guitar-Dog Hey, alright.
@@Guitar-Dog atpholup
Bruh I thought he got nerfed when I picked him back up but now he just got stronger??? Back to Faust, I don’t feel good playing this character
Forgot to mention that his big ass normals do chip damage!
I think Day 1 Nago wasn't overpowered...but clone buff and f.SSS buff turned him into a powerhouse. DP was also pretty trash. Nago day 1 needed help but high health, high conversion, good neutral buttons and strong strike throw mix makes a top tier. Sure his air mobility is trash and sure his defensive options aren't brain dead but if they we're he'd be beyond broken.
I honestly thought they would nerf clone but instead "nerfed" 👀🤷🏿♂️😂😂 beyblade lol
I just hate otg 6h other than that he's "fair" and I say that with a heavy heart because he never really does feel fair to fight sometimes.
I think that Nago's design and counterplay are just not very fun to play against or interact with (like Chaos).
The gameplan I commonly see against Nago is "either win round start and go ham or wait for 2.5 blood". This would be fine except, unlike Sin Kiske (who I firmly believe is very much better designed as a meter management character), the command grab essentially forces you to gamble on his terms. Now this would also be ok if at max range he could be zoned out, but as discussed in the video, he cannot at low blood. This would also be fine except in season 2, meter gain is reduced and therefore Nago can keep running his gameplan. Let's also not forget guard crush state when he pops (compared to Sin who just sits there and is ready to die).
Overall it feels like this character has a convoluted counterplay plan that requires the enemy to mess up and get to high blood OR you flip a coin (which is also in his favor even if you win the coin flip because of guts).
I'd like to see so many things changed about this character subjectively, however to be more fair, I think blood gain needs to be bigger. These moves are too strong (and rightfully so), but the cost of using them often feels like its irrelevant. If they increase blood gain, you see these big moves less and there is more thoughtfulness of when to spend blood or not
I for one think Nago is perfectly fine and balanced
Increase his blood cost and he has zero chance against zoning. No dash, slow jump, no air dash. Clone is already expensive if you want to follow up
I think the zoning that the characters can do to him and lack of air dash justify the reduced blood. before the buffs you could walk all over him due to his limited movement as a whole.
The cost to use specials is enormous unless you get bit and he gets the big boy blood refund. Appropriate use of FD, checking/jumping the dash ins, and back dashing in the gaps of some strings of his strings has made it pretty rare that I get bit. I played nago a bunch before switching to May tho, so admittedly I know most of the shit nagos go for.
I can imagine it being tough for characters that can’t feasibly whiff punish or draw out wasted specials tho.
Bro the blood pop is -12, the guard crush doesn’t mean shit at that point
LK please hold K to do multiple fukyos to bloodrage FAST, thanks.
With love
A lowly Nago player :)
is it his DNF blockstrings
Nago is just goku moroha Slayer and Johnny
I still hate him more than HC. It’s probably because I’ve been a Gio main since day 1 and nago players mash so much that it makes me want to throw up, and they still haven’t changed.
Thats called using a strategy against gio which works. What I usually do against gio is that I purposely put my blood meter at lvl 2 and put some distance between myself and her, then I just wait until she runs towards me and right before she’s within the range to hit me, I fukyo back and do 5H. Of course it’s not that gio just runs towards me, player tries to bait me but I just have to be patient, because if I’m not, I’ll just pop.
A gio player complaining about mashing? LMAO
Let's also not forget the absolute chaos that is f.SSS, both on block AND on hit. Shit takes nearly a bar of blood away on block, and roughly about a bar and a quarter on hit. That sounds bonkers already, but what if I told you that you can STACK THIS BS? Yup, you can stack f.SSS blood mitigation just by doing RC and repeating the processes. It's genuinely criminal. God this character is a war crime, but goddamn it that's my boy.
Yeet
gud vidya
1:31 LK you can just hold a direction and K to keep fukyo'ing, not only is it more efficient than what you did here but it's also hilarious
Most hated. Idk when ram exist
May does as much damage as nago
His system weaknesses are exactly why i dropped him after a year.
When they removed red rc scaling, nerfed a bunch of things and let the cast deal as much damage as Nago without the limitation his -oneshot- tag lost all value to me.
Hes top tier sure for the same 5 Nago players, but a year of not double jumping, dash breaking, air dashing just really opened up how frustrating he has become for me.
Moved to Gio, good break down, will like.
Nago is one of the most consistent though at least. Full combo off a normal 5P. Full combo off a normal 5k. Even if pretty much all characters in this game can do high damage combos, most are very reliant on either a counter hit or AA hit (like Faust with his 5k), whereas Nago just has to hit *something* to do big damage.
But yeah, I guess having weird movement options due to the lack of a double jump or dash can get tedious unless you're into the whole heavy character archetype.
Im a Nago main and I hate Nago.
Pls dont make him a braindead character.
He's already a pretty braindead character. Not to say that all Nago mains are braindead - there are plenty of good, smart Nago mains. But plenty of people can get him to celestial without turning their brain on once.
People on release: nago bad
Me: special cancels go brr
The main reason people slept on him early on is that he wasn't nearly as good - and Sol and Ram were a lot better. If you wanted to win on release you were playing Fair Far Slash Frederick.
Is that title correct grammaticaly?
Yes, it's not a question so the sentence is built normally even with why
Yes. It's like saying, "Nagoriyuki is top tier and this is why"
Anyone else not really like this new white box video format? Am I alone on this one?
I THINK seriusly is not top tier anymore , there are too many characters with feint , dash , priority , dp , too make them safe after a rushdown setup , and rage meter build too fast for nothing
Forgot to mention he has the best roundstart in the game so he automatically starts every round with an advantage.
Its true nago can confirm off almost anything but we have to take care not to forget that he has to spend resources to do so in a lot of situations. Hes definitely strong though, cool af too.
What? Nago can't dash? Nah you're fake this whole channel is fake this whole channel is...