As the topic states, thylacotator is a speed immune rending creature, and as such it shouldn’t have a slowing move that it can use to beat down the only normal answers to its class (faster cunning’s and distraction). Pretty much any other strike (cleansing, etc) would be fine.
A.) it’s pretty slow in its own right.
B.) cunnings easily beat it.
C.) it has very low base damage since it’s mainly percentage based.
D.) It is supposed to counter tanks, but can’t do that if it gets slowed
E.) It’s a wild card.
I think that’s pretty fair. Minor Rending Attack, Cleansing Strike, Fierce Strike, Pinning Strike, Persistent Ferocious Strike, etc are all options that wouldn’t hurt Cunnings as much.
Or maybe just give it Decelerating Strike or something.
Actually, it beats the Epic Cunnings that lack priority moves, especially since it has a 64% chance to land at least one crit in 2 hits.
I don’t really see how your other points are relevant here, since Superiority Strike is the issue.
Another option is to cut its base damage in half or something, that wouldn’t really hurt its viability against anything else.
Pinning strike would be very good
PFS may be a bit wild on something with major rending attack lol, but I agree, as long as the strike doesn’t hard counter dodge and distraction it works fine for me.
Actually, now that I think about it, Epic hybrid tourneys have way too much pinning going on, just a nitpick
While true I much prefer pinning strike to no escape spam, since at least pinning strike is a choice rather than no escape doing all the heavy lifting.
Yeah, you could get nitro Thylas revenge-killing stuff with PFS and then OHKOing whatever’s next, so probably not a good idea
Nobody is asking for it to lose speed immunity or be slower…it’s supposed to outspeed and beat down tanks and it should do that. What it shouldn’t also be able to do is beat down cunning creatures with superiority strike 
. It won’t change most of the good matchups (which are numerous) it’ll just give cunnings a better window to deal with it. I wouldn’t mind it even gaining a point or two in speed either, since again that type of creature (speed immune rending) is instantly strong against everything but cunning.
my bad. skimmed the first line and inferred something completely different.
i’d say giving it a basic slow would be fine.
I would rather see it made faster than it be given slowing. It should have minimal options against cunnings and should always be slower, rather than be able to make a speed advantage for itself at any time. Creatures that can do that are usually either very slow and are resilients or they’re the moschops/scuto type that is very weak to fierce but is a faster resilient. Seeing as thyla beats most resilient and fierce it really doesn’t need SS or any slowing to remain excellent in the meta.
other than the odd 1000 damage it’ll do to cunnings with just a slowing strike, i don’t see the issue. distraction would hurt it even more then.
many cunnings have resistance to DoT as well as some fierce and cunning-fierce. so the bleed into Rend combo is already diminished quite a bit.
i just don’t see why it can’t have a non cleansing slowing move so distraction is an even better counter to it.
I first want to agree that something like decel strike is a major improvement over the precise distraction cleansing SS. However, decel strike into greater rending attack does loads of damage to cunnings if not outright kills them due to their small health pools. I agree this isn’t as big an issue as many other balance issues, but I see it as a place to make tweaks. I think regular cleansing strike may be the sweet spot since that way it could do consistent damage against cunnings while also being vulnerable to them.
I think this is pretty debatable. It boils down to how good you think it deserves to be against Cunnings, especially considering it usually dominates most Resilients and Fierce creatures.
Giving it a non-Distraction-cleansing slowing move would make it less useful against Cunnings, but it would still leave them as setup fodder for whatever comes next, so it wouldn’t be hard-countered by them.
Also some Cunnings don’t have multi-turn Distraction or rend-resistance, meaning it would still deal a lot of damage to them (e.g. Smiloceph, Velosrhacos, etc).
I agree there’s room for debate about what replaces SS. However cleansing strike isn’t precise and does give the opponent the chance to hit a second move, which in the case of some of what you described is enough to kill. That being said there’s certainly pros and cons to it and many other replacements based on what niche it should fill…as long as it isn’t a hard counter to cunning like SS or resilience
you’re right there.
i see thyla having a bit of a leg up in terms of cunnings in its rarity. not outright beating them, but doing a bit more damage. it is a superhybrid after all while most epic cunning creatures are not. the only other part cunning superhybrid in epic rarity is scaphotator, and well… its kinda trash.
I’m using andrewsarchis as an example here actually for cleansing strike, it gets one solid hit off on a cunning (which is usually a good chunk of the hp of the cunning) but then goes down. I see thyla as something that could quite easily take a similar niche rather than have an extremely strong anti-cunning move.
i feel cleansing strike may actually be worse for thyla imo. considering its low damage vs andrew’s 1400.
if it were to get cleansing strike i feel thyla should have a small damage buff as well. 100-200.
I mean there’s no doubt that any move that isn’t SS is a nerf, so I’m down to see some sight tweaks to compensate for that. Unsure if that’s better placed in speed/dmg/hp etc but the crux of the issue is that thyla’s cunning matchups are a bit too favorable