AE Changes and Comments

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1

Blanka Changes in AE (so far) (last edit 11/30/2011 Hong Kong Time)

Unique Attacks

  • Rock Crusher (Toward + Medium Punch) has less recovery. Rock Crusher, into Far Standing Light Punch into Beast Roll is possible now.

? Beast Slide (Down-Toward + Hard Punch) has less active frames, as a result the whole animation time is shorter. Also, his hitbox during recovery has been increased. Properties changed, seems to have a better block stun, so it seems harder to punish…

  • His Forward Hop (Toward + 3x Kick) has more grounded frames of animation during start up, making him easier to grab out of it.

Special Moves

  • EX and LP ball on block remains the same as before, MP ball is shortened on block, and HP ball on block is the shortest distance making it easiest to punish. On hit everything remains the same.

  • EX Backstep Rolling’s (Rainbow Ball) forward distance has been reduced a little, so it’s harder to escape from the corner. It is still possible to move forward and back based on joystick movement, though.

  • EX Electricity has a 5 frame startup, which is 5 frames faster than it was in SSF4. EX Electricity now has the same startup time as Light Punch Electricity.

+EX Rainbowball can now go backwards…

Choco Blanka’s report

? ChocoBlanka feels most of his changes are minor.

? When a Hard Punch Beast Roll is blocked, the distance Blanka bounces away is REALLY short. Medium Punch Beast Roll is also shorter, as reported. It’s easier to be punished now. Beast Rolls aren’t as mindless as they were before, but they’re still useful.

? Light Punch Beast Rolls bounce away on block seems to be the same as before. The EX version seems unchanged as well.

? EX Rainbow Ball’s distance is about 2/3rd of what it used to be, but it also changed so that he bounces a little bit back as well. You could get punished from escaping with this now, depending on the character you’re up against.

? Blanka’s Beast Slide (Down-Toward + Hard Punch) had its blockstun increased, so that you can use the tip more easily.

? Range on Blanka’s hop forward seems to be increased. Choco said she’s very happy about this.

? Standing Medium Kick comes out faster.

? Crouching Medium Kick seems to have better priority, again Choco is happy about this.

? Choco warns she could be wrong about some of this stuff, as its only the first day she played.

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Everybody expected the ball bounce back distance to change… i’m kinda surprised that different strength gives different bounce… and they didn’t mention what LP is like… I just wonder if EX Ball is gonna be more safe than before now… if that’s the case… that’ll be kinda cool… however i doubt it though…

Beast slide has less activate time… does that mean it’s even faster now? or does that mean it’s got less active frames time… and when they say the whole animation is shorter does that mean the recovery is faster as well? Its kinda hard to say by just reading this… but from the sound of it… it seems like a buff to me… but can’t tell until we actually play the game.

Everything else to me sounds like nothing exciting… unless EX electricity is 3 frames or less start up then i guess that might be something worthy of paying attention to…

Forward hop… gotta see how badly it got nerfed… but in general i’m ok with that…

ex rainbow ball i guess is what bothers me the most out of all the stuff… when blanka is trapped in the corner… he sucks already… its already bad enough that we have no real offensive options to save our ass when cornered or in a bad position but to have our only escape option taken out is ridiculous… … unless ex electricity not only have less start up time but also invincibility… then ok… that’ll be really good… otherwise… this kinda sucks.

-LAU

3

Well since the rainbow ball cant really be used to get out of corners…honestly…I would love a capcom member to tell me what the hell is it going to be used for now…like there is absolutely no point to use that damn thing now. People are getting hip to the cross up balls and u cant combo in it…like is it only here for the simple reason he had it in SF II?

4

The slide nerf hurts him vs Chun and Guile, the ball nerf hurts him vs a lot of characters (most notably Ryu/Ken), and the rainbow roll nerf hurts him overall.

Obviously we’ll need to wait until AE actually comes out to see but he sounds unusably bad now.

5

well… i think slide nerf in general i dunno if it’ll effect vs chun/guile like you said… but the bigger “hurt” box on recovery will definitely make sure there’s gonna be less whiffs afterwards… which sucks

they mentioned the hit box for ball is wider now… to me this has mainly two use… (assuming i’m reading it correctly)… it’ll make horizontal ball as far anti air easier… or you can say harder to jump over… and it makes crossup hori-ball easier to do… imo both these things are kinda unnecessary…

right now i’m just hoping ex. electricity starts up super fast (less than 3 frames)/invincibility

-LAU

6

oh great, no safe ball on hit. more punishable on block, make rainbow ball even worse then it already, nerf the slide too… that’s just great… but hey, rock crusher got a buff whoohoo how many blankas actually used it? maybe, just maybe the overhead is now useable, but i doubt it. electric thunder buff, well, that sounds nice. maybe it comes out quick enough so blanka can’t be thrown out of it anymore, which i also doubt.

overall, blanka will drop big time in the ranking.

i was hoping for better frames for his normals, hence more frame-advantage and/or easier links for his combos (buffs that cammy received, as if she actually needed them). upball does knowdown and armor break, ex-rainbow gets more invincibility frames. slide can be fadc (similar to dictator’s slide). last but not least: ball safe on hit.

now that would’ve been something. but that would make a strong blanka and people would cry even more and capcom can’t allow this. so they nerf the shit out of him.

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bendermac:

wider hit box on ball should mean… easier to safe ball right?

-LAU

8

lau, i doubt that made the ball safe. that’s the buff i want the most. but we’ll see.

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streets translation on the front page says distance travelled with balls is ordered lp < ex < mp < hp. Where are people reading it’s bounceback that has different distances?

10

Rock Crusher -> Ultra 1?

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well none of this sounds good to me. when they say his “hittable” hitbox got widened on rolls do they mean it will be easier or harder to be hit out of it.

congratulations to all the scrubs who complained about blanka and got his ass nerfed.

12

Rock Crusher buff is useless unless they make it faster.

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ex elec wont be invincible, that is one change i’ve always thought about but never bothered mentinoing because it’d infuriate so many scrubs. You could really pressure easily on wakeup and beat reversals, you could early cross up mk and beat throw/cr.tech or reversals and on block you’d get 3-5 hits of chip. i’d burn my meter it would be fun, but currently ex elec will be beaten by throws, cr.lk and reversals so yeah even at 3frame startup its still useless.

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puts on cap, leaves Blanka forum, goes to find a new character :shake:

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i approve of the slide nerf :lovin:

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i said the same after vanilla :wink:

i’ll probably stick with blanka, i know i’m lazy to learn a new character unless they really click with me.

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Is it really a nerf? Less active frames but the same distanc means it’s a faster move. And here’s a question about active frames:

Say I have a ridiculous hypothetical move with 50 active frames and 50 recovery frames…and say it causes 20 frames of block stun.

Am I correct in saying…
If I hit them on the first active frame (they block), they have 20 frames of block stun, and then they have the remaining 30 frames of active + 50 frames of recovery…so 80 frames to punish. Aren’t excessive active frames essentially recovery frames? (of course if I hit them on the last active frame they only have 30 frames to punish (cause of block stun)

18

I don’t understand why they made slide more punishable on block. Who has trouble punishing that?

19

I have threaten to drop blanka so many times, but I find myself slowly going back to him no matter how bad he gets…but seriously…these changes are bull…

20

I wonder how much his ball hurtbox was nerfed. This is what it looks like now:
http://otersi.com/00_interesting_frames/blanka_blankaball.png (green empty box)