Can anyone explain the properties of Lum's dice?

Gameplay and Strategy
1

Hi everyone, still loving this game even if I really only have one friend to jam it with (all the quick matches I’ve done have suffered since I’m in lovely, laggy Australia).

Recently I made an effort to pick up Lum and have started to really enjoy him. Currently I get a LOT of value out of his dice super, since as long as he can create a safe window to chuck 'em down where the opponent can’t quickly cut off the screen where they land, they create a huge window to do pretty much whatever I want.

After watching dice sail through yet another super animation and kill him, my training partner has politely asked me to find out what the dice do and don’t interact with. From my observation, they seem to be high (if not infinite) duration projectiles, but only when Lum actually sends them airborne with a move. They certainly eat other projectiles in their path. However, I’ve also noticed situations where Jaina’s ground super can destroy a die which is just sitting on the ground, or a die has not vanished on block.

Is there a straightforward explanation of how you can expect dice to behave? This game is normally so good about laying out how things work, it’s especially jarring when things behave in ways that seem hard to understand. The other big 2 I can think of are Val’s Rainbow Disc (hits after the visual vanishes, when it will or won’t do actual damage) and how characters react after being hit out of the air (landing in neutral faster than they normally recover or landing in weird spots).

2 Likes
2

Dice have 2 hit points, so they destroy projectiles with 1 hit point and keep going, and it takes two hits against a stationary die to destroy it.

The part about the dice having 2 hit points versus projectiles was never intended. The intent was only to have them take two hits to destroy when stationary. The simplest way to fix this will be to just go back to them always having 1 hit point in all situations, so we will do that next patch. That means if it hits a level 1 projectile, they’ll both be destroyed, and that only one hit vs stationary dice will destroy them.

Also, some people have asked about hitting the enemy dice while they are flying through the air. Regardless of any balance concerns, and for feel reasons only, we probably should allow the dice to be hit in this case. People generally think they can hit them when they are flying, so we should probably match their expectation and allow it. That may or may not be in the next patch, we don’t know yet.

3

That’s strange, this is one of the few fighting games I can confidently play overseas because the net code is so good.

4

Huh. Must just be my garbage net then. I tried again this morning after posting this and it’s red bar as usual, very noticeable lag. You can kind of play but it’s just not satisfying.

And thank you Sirlin for clearing up the dice stuff. Those changes sound like a bit of a nerf, but I’ll figure something else out to do with Lum I guess.