Killer Instinct's Latest DLC Character Gargos Is Out Now With New Patch

The villainous Gargos is out now, the official Killer Instinct Twitter account announced today. He comes with Patch 3.1.5 that makes balance changes and fixes multiple issues.

Killer Instinct developer Iron Galaxy announced Gargos two months ago in its Season 3 launch trailer, but the studio only just revealed gameplay of the demonic warlord in a livestream this month. You can check out how Gargos plays here.

The accompanying patch fixes things like a crash that happens when signing out of a profile and a soft lock that occurs if you press A and B on "Save Shadow Data." Another issue that gets fixed would cause the current health at the end of a replay to carry over into the next Survival match. You can read the full patch notes here or at the bottom of the article.

The last character to be released was the vampiric Mira, who uses sliding, teleporting, and neck-biting attacks on her enemies. She also happens to be the sister of another Killer Instinct character, Maya. Check out her gameplay trailer here.

There are still two more characters to be released for Season 3. One of them is rumored to be Gears of War villain General Raam, whose name appeared in leaked images. He wouldn't be the first guest character, as Killer Instinct already plays host to Rash from Battletoads and Arbiter from the Halo franchise.

Killer Instinct is available for both Xbox One and PC.

New Features

• Added New Character – Gargos
  • Default Costume
    • Accessories (3 Sets)
    • Color Variations (9 Colors)
  • Retro Costume
    • Accessories (3 Sets)
    • Color Variations (7 Colors)
  • Combo Assist Support
• Added ability to make a Gargos Shadow in Shadow Lab

General Bug Fixes

• Fixed a crash that would occasionally occur when signing out of a profile on the Main Menu
• Fixed a softlock that would sometimes occur when the player simultaneously pressed A and B on “Save Shadow Data”
• Fixed an issue where watching a replay of a Shadow Survival or Survival match would cause current health at the end of the replay to carry over into a new Survival match
• Fixed an issue in Training Mode where Mira would remain invisible when the player reset her position while she was in mist form during her Ultra Combo
• Fixed an issue where some of Retro Mira’s VFX would be missing in a mirror match
• Fixed an issue where you would briefly see Mira’s scythe below her during her Aerial Counter Breaker
• Fixed some accessory lighting issues with Aganos, Sabrewulf, and Kim Wu on Forbidden Archive

System Changes

• Fixed a bug causing the attacker in a throw tech situation (the one who initiated the throw) to not be pushed back by the throw tech, resulting in closer-than-expected positioning, especially noticeable in the corner

Character Changes

Glacius

• Lowered damage of Ranged Auto Doubles by ~10%
  (This change was to make them more in line with Gargos’ ranged auto doubles, which also deal less damage than his close auto doubles. Because of the way Combo Breakers work in S3, it makes more sense to us to give Glacius players a choice between maintaining range for less damage, or transitioning his combo into a close ranged one for full damage, rather than just doing the same thing all the time. Glacius’ keep away abilities and damage are pretty outstanding in Season 3, so this small damage adjustment shouldn’t hurt him too much.)

Thunder

• Light Sammamish no longer causes a hard knockdown
  (This change was to put the invincible reversal version of Sammamish in line with other invincible reversals. We feel that he should not be getting great mixups after landing this.)

Orchid

• Her Air Throw is now breakable in combos as if it were a normal hit. You break it using LP+LK, but Orchid can also counter break you for trying, so be careful!
  (This lead to a lot of unbreakable damage for the last 2 years of play. Now that we’ve developed tech to allow air grabs and anti-air grabs that don’t end combos to be breakable within the combo system for Gargos, we’ve added this tech to Orchid to bring her more in line. Orchid players still have her new air target combos that continue juggles to mix in with her air throw combos to keep opponents guessing and lock them out.)

TJ Combo

• Advantage Ender now occurs much quicker to make followup mixups much more surprising as they flow with the speed of TJ’s Combos
  (While the setups after Advantage Ender can be pretty good, both players do have quite a lot of time to think about them due to the speed of the old version of this animation. The new version is much snappier and keeps TJ flowing like he should. We think TJ players will like this change and we expect to see the Advantage Ender a bit more often as a result.)

Aganos

• Fixed an issue that caused damage to Aganos’ walls if he performed a Ground Bounce or Recapture on his opponent
• Fixed a bug causing an inconsistency in the recovery time of Ruin after hitting an armored character

Aria

• Fixed a bug causing her Level 1 Explosive Arc ender to whiff Mira at very close range

Shadow Jago

• Various changes to Jumping Heavy Punch
  • Fixed a bug causing Jumping HP to hit only 2 times instead of the intended 3 (he flips 3 times)
  • Reduced the attackbox size on Jumping HP so they reach above him less and cover less space overall
  • Increase the vulnerable box size during Jumping HP to make this move easier to anti air
  • Reduced the blockstun inflicted by Jumping HP by 12 frames, leaving Shadow Jago roughly even with his opponent on landing when this move is blocked
    (These changes should go a long way into making use of this move less thoughtless, and encourage Shago players to use jumping attacks with less coverage if they want to maintain frame advantage when landing. This is still a powerful jumping attack, however.)

Kim Wu

Kim has a few buffs below. We notice that when most players ask for buffs, their suggestions are to simply remove a character’s weaknesses. This solution doesn’t work. Instead, we’ve chosen to tweak a few things that should enhance Kim’s strengths. Read on.

• When returning enemy projectiles with Firecracker, different strengths will now send Dragon Cannons at different angles
  • Light Firecracker returns a horizontal Dragon Cannon, just like before
  • Medium Firecracker returns a 30 degree up angled Dragon Cannon
  • Heavy Firecracker returns a 60 degree up angled Dragon Cannon
  • Shadow Firecracker returns 3 Dragon Cannons, one at each angle
    (The team felt it was a bit too easy to simply jump over the Dragon Cannons being returned by Kim, so we added angle options to make it far less predictable.)
• Increased walk speed by 15%
  (Kim is a ground based, footsie heavy character, but we felt she should use just a little better walk speed to really find success with this gameplan.)
• Her forward dash now finishes in 17 frames (down from 22 frames)
  (This should also help with the overall ground positioning and mobility needed to be a very successful footsie style character.)
• When the Dragon Counter (Parry) is successful and the resulting explosion hits the opponent;
  • It now causes a hard knockdown vs airborne opponents
  • It deals 20 damage to the opponent
  • It builds some shadow meter for both Kim Wu and her opponent
    (We wanted to increase the reward for a success parry slightly, and feel these changes should help. Anti-air parry, in particular, should now be a fairly powerful option.)
• Removed the restriction preventing Dragon Stocks from refilling during Instinct if Kim was in a reaction or knocked down
  (This was a holdover from a previous instinct ability we tried on Kim during development. Since that is not in the game, it doesn’t make sense to prevent Dragon generation while being hit anymore, and we aren’t sure why we left it there in the first place. This should give Kim players a much more predictable number of Dragons during Instinct.)
• Fixed a bug causing her vulnerable boxes to change size when using rapid fire Standing Light Punch

Tusk

• Tusk’s Deflects now reset the combo state so that the followup hit can deal the same damage as the non-Deflect version of the move, but not add any potential damage to the opponent
  (We noted this change was coming in the 3.1 patch notes, but here it is! Deflect versions of Tusk’s moves no longer leave any potential damage behind on the opponent. While Tusk’s raw damage is untouched, and this change technically makes his Deflected moves hit harder than they did in 3.1, the combo after will not start at an increased ender level.)

Arbiter

• Moved the first active frame of Crouching Gun Butt back one frame (used to hit on 12, now it hits on 13). Added 2 additional frames of active time onto the end of Crouching Gun Butt, making it active for 1 frame longer over all
  (This change helps with the change below to prevent this Heavy Command normal from being used as a Medium manual, while also making it a slightly better anti air when used early.)
• Moved the Manual Cancel window on Medium Linker Truth Seeker (qcf+P) from frame 29 to 31 to prevent Crouching Gun Butt (Heavy) from being used as a Medium Manual
• Moved the Manual Cancel window on Medium Mercy’s Demise (qcb+P) from frame 30 to frame 28 to ensure that Crouching Medium Punch was able to connect as a manual here

Rash

• Fixed an issue preventing players from canceling Battlemaniacs Beat Em Up combos into Ultra

Mira

• Fixed a bug causing her Lv4 Reaping Ender to fan a Kick Burnout
• Fixed a bug that could cause some auto doubles to whiff after long distance QCB+HP recaptures
• Fixed a bug causing the post-superflash portions of her Shadow Moves to autocorrect unexpectedly
• Fixed a bug that allowed her to land a Heavy manual off of a Medium Reaping Linker
• Fixed a bug preventing Mira from canceling openers into Doubles, Linkers, Enders, or Ultras if her opponent was hit by her projectiles during the move
• Fixed a bug causing her crouching LK to be -5 on block instead of -3 like the chained crouching LKs are