Someone asked this in the last thread but I don’t think there’s any way to save Vikala unless they start doing major rework shit like obscenely buffing/replacing her normals and letting her items stay out on hit. She is a multi-step gameplan character to get ANY value out of her items (that go away on throw tech LMFAOOOOO) while Faust, Platinum, and Teddie immediately create extremely weighted game states off their items. Not a single item she has is as powerful as Strive Mini-Faust, Neko Hammer, or Oil Drum. All of her items have insanely poor projectile durability. Her normals are awful. Her mid-range is awful. Her zoning is anemic. Her stagger pressure is mediocre at best. Her lows are so bad to the point where she cannot stop people walking back without risking everything on shit special cancels. She has no mix. Her overhead is 28F. Her items add awful damage to her combos. Cannons are poison to her kit and exist to give value to her god-awful items. It’s like if Faust had to bat items or if Platinum HAD to spend 50 meter on jackpot super to get value out of them. It’s a parasitic relationship. Good Vikala players will just straight up sit and do nothing while Star is out because you can’t actually get any mix off it. The one genuinely good item is Bomb, which is hilarious because it’s 10x weaker than any version of Faust’s bomb. She loses to basic system mechanics. She cannot stop jumps. She has no air mobility like Ferry and Metera but still has a floaty jump. Her conversions if she actually baits throw tech or mash tech are horrendous outside of the corner. The only thing I could see them doing is letting cannons hit rolls but that’s about it. This character fucking sucks and anyone who still plays her is stronger than me. She is unfinished and the unused item textures that are still in the game just confirm this to me. She doesn’t even have the precedent of being extremely oppressive like Faust was. Vikala is weak because it’s funny.