Scorpina Takes On Legacy Wars

Scorpina is a defender with an eye-catching kit that Legacy Wars has never had before: 2 counters, 2 breakers. That’s right, no strikes. While this makes her quite vulnerable to aggressive breaker usage, she can fight back with the speed and range of her own breakers.

Once she lands a hit, Crescent Blade can stun the opponent for a very long time, helping her recover energy for crazy combos or just getting prepared for the next neutral exchange. Most of her attacks have a damage over time effect on them, which can be canceled if she gets hit, but the long stun of Crescent Blade usually makes that impossible.

Fighting as her and against her can have a very different feel from what you might be used to, so pay careful attention in these brand new matchups to practice up for long term success.

Skills

Primary 1: Ruthless Slashes

• Type: Counter
• Cost: 3

A 3-hit combo that knocks back on the last hit. It has a dash cancel on the 1st hit and the 2nd hit, so it’s not quite a 50/50, but it’s still a potent mixup.

The first hit shoots out a poisonous blast with surprising range that inflicts a damage over time effect.

Primary 2: Scorpion Tail

• Type: Counter
• Cost: 3

A single hit launcher for starting combos. You can think of this move like a slower version of Guile’s Flash Kick. It doesn’t recover as quickly and is blockable on reaction, but it has the range of a dash to make up for it.

Special 1: Crescent Blade

• Type: Breaker
• Cost: 4

By far Scorpina’s most versatile attack. She throws a boomerang projectile, which eventually returns to hit the opponent in the back. She chases the boomerang with a poisonous shoulder charge, then jumps backward for a beam attack.

The boomerang throw is dash cancellable, which can help set up for tricky situations or just recover lots of energy at the end of a combo. The shoulder charge is dash cancellable too, striking a balance between damage and energy recovery.

This is one of the fastest breakers in the game, and opponents will need to respect the threat of it at all times.

Special 2: Scorpina’s Rage

• Type: Breaker
• Cost: 4

Scorpina jumps up for a beam attack, then slams down with a poison strike. On the way up, she is invulnerable to projectiles.

The beam is quite fast but still strikeable on reaction. It’s also dodgeable, but a bit too fast to dodge on reaction if done at point-blank range.

Assist: Venomous Hand

• Type: Breaker
• Cost: 3

A quick flurry of poisonous shots that knocks back on the final hit. It appears in front of the leader, so dodging it can be quite tricky. It can set up for a combo, but the knockback can make it awkward for certain characters if the opponent isn’t in the corner.

Sample Combos

Crescent Blade → Scorpina’s Rage → Ruthless Slashes

An uncancelled Crescent Blade leaves Scorpina at the perfect range for Scorpina’s Rage, no dashing required. This helps her keep the energy cooldown from resetting, especially when starting a combo after a block.

Scorpion Tail → Crescent Blade → Scorpina’s Rage → Crescent Blade → Scorpina’s Rage → Ruthless Slashes 

With some luck, Scorpina can keep a combo going for quite a long time. To really get some juicy combos, cancel the first hit of Crescent Blade right as your energy cooldown ends. Watch how much energy regenerates from the Crescent Blade cancel!

VS Scorpina

• This is true across the entire game, but especially true against Scorpina: be unpredictable with your dashes. While both of her breakers are dangerous, they start with projectiles. The sooner you corner yourself, the sooner she can start using them.
• Scorpina will really want to be really close to you before using Crescent Blade, so you may find her repeatedly dashing right into you while you’re mid-stage. In this situation, try throwing out a breaker so that her only option is to use a strike assist.
• If you can strikeout Scorpina’s Rage, she might get juggled. This gives some extra mileage to multi-hit strikes that otherwise wouldn’t lead to a combo. Be aware of the timing for whether you’ll get a juggle or not.

• Scorpina relies heavily on her special slot: it’s almost always the best option for extending a combo. If she could’ve easily continued the combo with Scorpina’s Rage or Crescent Blade but instead did something else, you can be almost totally certain that she has a block there. You can wait for her to whiff the block so you can punish her, or just start going crazy with breakers of your own.
• If Scorpina pokes at you with the 1st hit of Ruthless Slashes but doesn’t continue the offense, your number one priority should be to poke her right back. Damaging her even once cancels out the remainder of the damage over time effect. It might not seem like much, but that extra damage can be the difference between victory and defeat.

Advanced Tips

Assist Usage

Scorpina is a defender, which causes her to draw blocks more frequently. This throws a wrench into her usual gameplan. If you don’t have a block available, try comboing with her primaries to get a block to show up there. Then it’s party time with your breakers.

Alternatively, you can pair her with cheap assists in an attempt to get a block to show up there instead. It seems counterintuitive since you already have a dedicated primary slot for counters, but being able to counter a strike without bringing in the uncertainty of the block card’s next appearance can be very valuable in many matchups.

Guaranteed Crescent Blade

Dash cancelling Ruthless Slashes gives enough advantage that you can hit with Crescent Blade and the opponent has no way of striking it out. The extra 3EP you spend on that one hit is worth it if you know the resulting combo will end the match.