This is carrying on from the discussion about 85/90 and tornado stallers in Limited Random Thoughts, here:
http://worldbeyblade.org/Thread-MFB-Limi...pid1197681
I've edited it like a billion times while I played around with stuff and yeah, just woke up so my thoughts are all over the place. Finished just after I made this post - MF-L Burn 85MF is better than I remembered but it's still not really a problem for game balance honestly.
Yes it's a Rock mold and just for the record as I haven't edited beywiki to correct it yet, but it's the same weight as any other mold (I've got one 6 cylinder heavier than it by like .03g, it's heavier than the rest though) - the weight from the cylinders is moved to the underside rim, i.e. more flywheel effect, more attack, better solo spin, etc. Rock has always had good solo spin but poor stamina because of recoil - contact is its problem, and the entire point of tornado stallers is not making contact. It also has a nice sloped shape which provides similar effects to Burn - the ability to ramp opponents off itself. Throw in the fact that tornado stallers often need aggression to handle certain opponents and that Rock has plenty of that (plus good weight to it) and, well, MF Rock Cancer 85MF (0 Cylinder) works pretty darn good. How it matches up to MF-L Burn might vary depending on your meta and getting a 0 cylinder mold isn't that easy afaik, perhaps not worth the hassle, but yeah, it strikes me as more of a threat and even then it's just a good combo, not gamebreaking.
Also keep in mind that I've been using a Metal-Flat based Attack custom for the past few days and am used to launching metal tips to KO stuff. Tornado Stallers need to be able to do this to handle a bunch of fairly common opponents, and it takes a fair bit of practice - they still take a fair bit of skill to be particularly strong.
Finally, if it is a problem as the format currently stands, I think there are enough counters to it right now, and any ban like that would be such a huge change (as 85/90 are really not that overpowered by themselves - it's not a case like Scythe where something is just the best for basically everything, they're good at most types but so are plenty of other options) that we'd want to take plenty of time to let people adapt. While on quickly playing around with some basic setups with them, more defensive tips with very respectable stamina on low tracks such as SB and JSB (again, something in this blogpost I'm writing - they're pretty nice on low tracks) aren't quite enough to OS Burn 85MF (on Earth Cygnus 85SB/JSB) or super solid against KO, there's still plenty of other worthwhile options and we could see new parts or tactics rise to the fore rather than crippling a lot of wheels unnecessarily - and banning 85/90 would set a pretty bad precedent IMO.
In response to TBD's post in the other thread (which would've been responding to my post before I edited it and posted the contents here):
I am actually outspinning or KOing most of those except Scythe Cancer 230D so far. Haven't tried a huge range of things, Earth 230D might be sufficient but Flame PegasisII 230D for example gets outspun after being knocked around a bit. Not doing well with MF-H Libra TH170CS either which previously used to work quite nicely, and Scythe GB145CS is okay but a bit hit and miss - which is new to me as it was wrecking burn the other day.
So yeah, I'm getting much better results than I'm used to - still not enough to really make me worried about the thing (barely enough to make me consider using it instead of Rock or Aquario), but enough that I noticed. A lot of it is because I'm managing to KO stuff more often, thanks to practice, and it's not something I'd want to do in a tournament situation, but given Burn's weight distribution, a little extra weight on the edge could cause noticeable improvements, and I'm using my heaviest Burn (don't know what mold it is, it's from Burn Unicorno SW145JB so I would assume mold 2 or 3, but I've got plenty of stuff from all around that release date so it'd be nothing but random variation), so perhaps that's part of it? Either way though it's still not enough for me to be really scared of the setup or concerned it'll hurt game balance - it has seen use in plenty of places and done OK, but even when F230(G)CF, which it did quite well against, was super popular, it still didn't really stand out that much.
FWIW, MF-L Burn Cancer 85MF is probably not even something I'd swap to LLD for - MF-H Pegasis/Libra CH120RF do well enough against it (because they only need one or two hits while they're moving pretty much at all to KO it - in Libra's case, if Burn hits it from behind somehow it usually results in Burn bouncing out an exit LOL) that I'd be comfortable using them against it. Same thing goes for Rock, perhaps harder to handle with Pegasis but in the end, still not that scary.
Also, the other issue with it is that I still think 85/90 are important for Format Health - removing them makes a massive number of things much stronger, and they don't really strike me as being the problem, but then on the other hand neither does any part of that combination.
If we were to look at it, which would absolutely need significant tournament dominance, I'd personally want to see all of the following things done too:
1. Significant time for the game to adapt to it - not a huge shift - if it's that big there's a problem, but seeing some good but underused things come out of the woodwork or parts that already work well but aren't known in a format without burn tornado stallers is something I would expect to happen.
2. If we do decide then to ban 85/90/100&W105??? (because of the 100-height SonoKong Mold), then I would argue strongly for a predetermined, finite trial period to see if this makes more problems than it resolves and what it would take to resolve them and if that is worthwhile in the first place.
3. See if anything currently banned could help resolve the issue with Tornado Stallers that would have to exist to be looking at this without seriously disrupting the format - eg Gravity (as if tornado stallers are very popular gravity f230(g)cf is probably not going to have a great time anyway). Could also look at Scythe assuming it's banned by then, though IMO Scythe is a lot more of a problem (luckily so far it's not too great as a tornado staller due to lack of real side-on aggression and various other factors) but still.
In the end though, even with the better results I'm getting with MF-L Burn Cancer 85MF today, IMO there are just too many things that are extremely good that it isn't reliably enough against for me to be worried about. Will consider listing it as a full combo I'm willing to lend out for my tournament if need be - put my beypoints where my mouth is, though personally I still think Rock is scarier anyway and I was gonna do it with that (tl;dr planning on lending a few pre-built customs alongside combos people can select from my spare parts or whatever, though I've not run that by staff yet so IDK how they'll feel). So uh yeah I stand by my "you guys are comically overreacting to a single tournament you obviously in which you weren't adequately prepared to take down a reasonably well known combo which has more than one very practical counter."
is pretty great tho, should do new solo spins tbh) is pretty obnoxious in terms of stamina and not having absolutely no defense (and therefore actually being able to KO some lighter stamina/spin steal stuff sometimes which is really weird to watch). 