Why is Suguri 46 billion strengthened again?

[fuochai]

You guys really don't think this character's passive is strong? Think about it, you can use a damage card to precisely control HP when a positive defense negative flash character like Marc is 3 or 5 blood, and it comes with accelerated movement, which is already more powerful than the majority of characters' hypers.And its own HYPER provides the cards needed for the passive.
Compared to regular Suguri and ver.2, she has a stronger passive as well as a higher panel.
Even if she keeps suguri's usual +1 -1 +2 in her panels, this is still quite the supermodel presence. Even the previous 0 0 +2 were one of the few characters I wanted to ban.
Originally the only 2EVD character with no negatives, now it's even an all-positive 2EVD character with an extremely strong passive, which is completely unacceptable to me.

[Sturmsang]

I guess it has to do with win % for each character. Suguri 46B was notorious for being one of the bottom characters for years despite getting multiple buffs. I remember some community members once posted win rates for each character for a certain month for a while, and there were 3 consistent bottom feeders every time:

QP, Chicken and Suguri 46B. The starter characters get "debuffed" in that ranking , because new players use them more, aka the average QP player is worse than the average unlockable character player. I think chicken is sorta considered as a joke character that's no one expects to be good.

That leaves Suguri 46B - I haven t seen these stats posted in a while, but i assume that she was buffed because she was still at the very bottom for win %.

I could totally see that being the case because her passive goes against the essence of normal mode - win with stars.

First of all - out of combat k.os do not generate stars. In fact, if someone is k.oed out of combat, they keep their stars and can revive back to full. Therefore, using her passive to k.o players is most of the time actually helping them. Therefore, the goal of the passive should be use the cards to soften the opposition and then use the dash to "finish them off". On that perspective, giving her an attack boost is very reasonable so that she can do this task more reliably.

You have to also consider that you do not get a lot of mileage in "getting closer to win" from this passive since Stars are still the way to go most of the time. The star burn you have to commit in this strategy is very heavy and most of the cards are either to expensive or unreliable.

From what I remember, these are the cards that she can pull with her hyper:
Long Distance Shot
Cloud of Seagulls,
Star Blasting Lights
Indiscriminate Fire Support
Extended Photon Rifle
Big Rocket (Marc Hyper)
Air Support (Fernet hyper)
Christsmasher (Meis hyper, has a x2 chance to be pulled, because you can also pull the upgraded version which immidiately gets downgraded to normal without red&blue)
pilot marcs hyper (x2 because it can be pulled in both forms)

Christmas Inferno (I didn t play her enough to actually know if she can pull her)

If we use the list, there are 11 potential cards that she can pull.
the only ones that can be considered reliable "soften up tools" are LDS and pilot hypers.
Therefore, the chance of a "good card" with the hyper is exactly 3/11 per card.
This makes the odds of "getting two good cards" from her hyper around 8 %, while having a slighlty above 50 % chance to pull neither good cards.

Mid tier pulls: Are somewhat reliable and/or cheap/free

I would still consider christsmasher in this tier.
It was a good pull before they buffed mei, because you could use it to punish bullies by double charging. If you k.oed them, the hyper paid itself back and you got a dash for spacing on top. Now they changed the card to ditch your entire hand to give it synergy with mei - which is a heavy detriment for her. The upside of this card is that its at least consistent in what it does and it goes net positive in stars now.

Another mid tier one is cloud of seagulls - which when doubled up becomes a pseudo gamble. I mean no one considers "Gamble" a great hyper, but this one is at least free and doesn t set you back in the star race.

Next tier would be bottom tier: Inconsistent and or costly
extended photon rifle, indiscriminate fire support, Big Rocket. air Support
The first two are reasonable in price but can accidentally k.o the target instead of softening them (or miss them completely) - aka you end up using stars to help your opponent.
x16 Rocket is reliable in effect but useless for a character that cannot rack up wins consistently, while also setting you back in the star race and helping the opponent. also imagine double charging this in the mid game to late game.
Then we have air support - which well - is random in its damage and costly. its not considered a good hyper for a reason but still could theoretically be good if you "high roll" with it.

And the dud tier: Star Blasting light - I do not think I have to explain why this is not something you want to see.

Anyways, if you pull one of your inconsistent cards, you have a solid chance of backfiring by k.oing the opponent - setting yourself back in the star race and giving the opponent star denial.

So - in conclusion: The passive is strong on paper and super great if everything goes right for you, but underwhelming in practice due to the available card pool which makes this a rare occurence. it is also very commitment heavy and has a paradoxical behavior with the usual win conditions of star norma:
none of these cards, except for christsmasher have a chance to give you back stars as a net positive on its own.
IF you go all in with "using the op passive", you bleed so much stars and either have to pray for rng to work in your favor for both "card damage rolls", "move rolls" and "battle rolls", or have to commit to wins norma all together as a +0 character.
Or: You ignore the passive, then you had a 4 hp 0/0/2 character with essentially no hyper.

Basically any "half commitment" (i.e. only use the good or mid tiers and throw the others) would be in a similar power echelon compared to both extreme cases. Based on that I can totally see why she would still be a bottom feeder character, and the buff - albeit a pretty heavy one - seems justified. It makes the bad cards more viable by giving her easier access to wins, while also buffing the odds of "soften and kill" in your favor slightly more.

[SomeGuy712x]

It's also possible to pull Grain's Hyper, All Guns at the Ready, which is nigh-useless most of the time, as anyone not named Grain cannot accumulate Cannonball Counters, so Suguri 46BY pulling that with her Hyper pretty much makes it a horribly overpriced single-hit Extended Photon Rifle (although if you do manage to KO someone with it, you at least get 1 Win and some stars back, but that's not going to happen often).

I kinda wish Mei's Hyper only caused a hand discard if Mei herself used it, since it was obviously meant for Mei, and it's annoying to see it pop up in Suguri 46BY's hand now. Certain other Hypers like Arnelle's only have additional functionality when wielded by the character they belong to, but unfortunately, that's not the case with Mei's Hyper causing a hand discard.