u/United-Ad919

To preface, this isn't a rant spawned from anger, just a matter of genuine concern and hope for a better future in the game.
When I say best, I don't mean the strongest necessarily, I genuinely think these 4 are what the rest of the roster should aim for in terms of freedom of expression in combat and variety in combos. In comparison to characters like Yuji, Gojo, and Todo, I feel like there's so much choice given to the user in terms of mix-ups and follow ups to different moves, especially with Yuki.

Fighting a Yuji or Gojo pretty much feels the same every time: 3 m1s, sometimes uppercut, Cursed Strikes, attempted Black Flash chain (mileage varies) and aerial crushing blow. Every time. Often I don't even see Yujis use manji-kick or the feint which could at least add some variety or player expression, but no, and I genuinely don't know why???

Gojo is the same story, just 3m1s and an occasional uppercut into rapid punches, use 1 and 2 once ragdolled, and twofold kicks is thrown sometimes in there. I ONLY ever see the variant of Lapse blue utilized, I don't remember the last time I've seen someone use the counter of the reversal red variant, and I have literally never witnessed the twofold kicks used ingame naturally.

Yuki players, in my experience, are always a fresh battle, with a slew of variants that I consistently see utilized and shuffled between, and it genuinely feels like you can tell what kind of playstyle your opponent has just by fighting them. There is so much freedom in playing her which makes her my favorite character by far, and the freedom and utility makes her by far one of the funnest characters in JJS.

Mechamaru also stands next to Yuki in terms of cards in his deck, although he's rarely played due to his ult being pretty garbage. However, the amount of mix-ups, diversions, and misdirections you can do with his dummies and all their move variants makes him such a fun and cool character to master ingame if you can look past his lacking awakening, and I don't think I need to speak much on Mahito.

Finally, I'm sure I'll see disagreements with Higgy and Choso being here since they can be pretty annoying to fight if their user knows what they're doing, and often those players use very similar combos to each other, so it might seem like I'm praising them for having the same problems as Yuji n Gojo. However, I've made an effort to actually use them in varied ways and utilize their variants and special skills in unique ways I don't see deployed often (seriously, why does no one use Higgy's 4+2? It's such a fun skill to hit) and they have much more player expression available, especially Choso with his ability to launch himself with supernova's which I think a rework should play into.

This isn't me ranting about Gojo and Yuji being no-skill, or being annoying to fight, since they're honestly pretty easy because again, they all do the same thing every time. If you've fought one, you've fought them all, and it just becomes boring to see one challenge you.

Obviously, JJS is a Roblox Battlegrounds, not Tekken, and it's unrealistic to expect every character to have a thousand moves, but it really is a shame that so many characters in this game have such formulaic gameplay when there's so much cool things they could take from both the source material and just make up. Literally look at Mei-Mei, who is so much more interesting to see and fight than Yuji. Maybe the fact that these characters are so basic to play is what makes them popular, while characters like Mechamaru and Yuki take more thinking.
(And of course, there are some players who use interesting and unique combos with characters like Todo, but they are very VERY rare.)

I really hope moving forward, Tze and the devs design characters with a lot more room for player thought to be a factor, and maybe rework older units in that same flavor. Thank you if you've actually read this far. Stand proud, you can read.

TLDR: MAKE CHARACTERS WITH MORE VARIETY TO PLAY AS AND AGAINST

It was a subtle thing in D1, but the enemy having different legions/groups with different goals or purposes made the opposing forces feel so much more believable as a threat, and it was great seeing events like different Fallen houses fighting each other or banding together.

D2 started with basically condensing every faction into one big group (House of Dusk, Red Legion, all Vex being the standard bronze color) and starting with Beyond Light we actually got distinct enemy divisions with gameplay changes, like House of Salvation using stasis and looking 10x cooler than Dusk, or the Shadow Legion Cabal using pyramid tech vs Imperium Cabal with their weird Star Wars shields; And of course the Lucent Hive being brighter and all their Light powers.

With EoF and Renegades introducing a lot more enemy subfactions like House of Exile and the Gangs on the Lawless Frontier, it looked like we were going to return to more diverse groups of enemies going forward, and I hope that direction is held up if a Destiny 3 were ever to be made.