This keeps me playing Cody. Keeps you safe (when patient) and makes Cody very dangerous when he’s close. His normals are great for maintaining pressure and fishing for counter hits.
But Cody is a challenge to say the least. I play chars I like and my mild success with Sakura (main) keeps me hopeful for Cody regardless of tier.
how is zonk knuckle not useful?? Its his only fricken reversal… that makes it useful by default…lol. And the ability to FADC it into ultra 1 is a plus as well. There is no way cody is top 10… top 20 yes, but that basically just means he is mid maybe mid-high tier. None of the new characters will break top 6 and only ibuki really has a shot at top 8 (dudley might make top 10). Reversals aren’t the end of the world to not have a very useable one, but it means he gets cross-up and priority air-ed (sounds like a mailing option…lol) for free as well as that they can basically pressure with a jab tick throw on wake-up without ANY worry. No reversal means the opponent doesn’t even have to GUESS on wake-up if you will do something… they KNOW you’ll likely just be blocking. Cody drops even farther without zonk. He does good damage and has some decent anti-air options but they aren’t awesome like akuma’s c.hp or a SRK. He doesn’t have a ton of initial range wit combo-able pokes so he has to use slides to get into a combo-able range or jumps which means characters with good anti-air being used by players with good teching abilities make cody much harder to get anything on. Right now people are getting counter-hit a lot but at hjigher level play cody’s overhead is a tad too slow and his lows aren’t that great which means if they just kinda make sure they are ready to tech its going to be hard for cody to use his frame traps (which i think are honestly his best +). Top tier characters are able to force the issue on offense or on defense. Sagat was able to use fb to force characters to get close at which point he had very very good mid-range tools that reset position. Akuma has a srk and c.hp to stop close range things and a teleport when worst comes to worse along with great lows a a completely ambiguous cross-up move along with a command throw (air to ground but whatever). Ryu was basically akuma with more health and a combo-able ultra and the ability to go meterless to ultra making jumping in on him overly risky. Bison does massive chip with his block string (scissors) that force players to do SOMETHING or risk getting chipped to death… and anything you do to get out of the block string either risks the dictator doing nothing and punishing or getting hit by another scissor for a knockdown. Rog pressure is with specials as well so he gets chip damage all the time, like cody he has kinda poor reversals but at least he easily gets his ultra off these reversals landing…without meter either… and his jab’s priority is insane. Rufus has ridiculously fast high low triangle jump mix-up, a godly air to air that combos into massive damage with one stock or with ultra, and a ultra that combos off basically everything (and his new ultra is pretty good against certain characters as well). Abel, who will likely be top 8, has a command grab with very fast rushdown and he now has an insanely good anti-air with EX FS along with 2 ultras that are very good… at at ALL times there is a worry about being mixed up with a TT, a throw, a c.lp, or a c.lk which covers EVERY option someone has once he lands that first blocked jab or f.mk. Sim has a godlike new ultra that covers his weaknesses and does very good damage on his moves that keep characters from getting into close range. Chun’s normal’s priority is off the charts and FAST, plus she has a ACTUAL combo-able ultra that you don’t have to worry about whiffing and can chip a person to death rather well.
Heck, look at someone like rose or guile or seth and cody just doesn’t have the type of moves to allow him to keep up. He has NOTHING to push the match unless he is holding his knife and he loses that very very easily. Defensively he can’t really keep people out and certain characters CAN keep him out because he doesn’t really have great avoidance tools like ibuki’s slide, an offensive teleport, or a good fireball (rocks are only good for baiting jump-ins with fake rocks… and for that I’d much rather just do a c.lk with a shoto). The only thing that keeps him mid maybe high mid tier is the fact that he DOES have the knife, he does a lot of damage off even his most basic of combos with or without an ultra involved, his ultras are pretty useable (not amazing… but good), and he can combo off a large portion of his normals which means he has a good damage output for frame trapping and tech trapping people (and he has a cross-up… but in super its more surprising if you don’t than if you do).
Cody won’t change in 12 months or in 5 months… he is a basic bruiser type character that is mid/high mid tier and doesn’t have a ton of bad match-ups but doesn’t have any that are particularly great either. His playstyle doesn’t have the type of chance to change drastically like a character like akuma or c.viper who jumped up tier lists when new strats arrived or drop off the face of the earth because shit that was working before stopped working. He’ll stay in the same spot he is now. Good enough and easy enough for anyone to pick-up and play, including good players, and win… but not the type of character that will be running through high level tournaments taking home the gold… especially because I am not liking his inability to get in on sim, and I fully expect sim to be tier-whored in this game (depending on just how bad his chun, balrog, etc. “bad” match-ups from the last game now are). Note: tier whoring means you picked your character because you wanted to play a top or the top tier… not because you liked X or like the playstyle of X.
Cody has too many problems to be good.
Yea, he has good damage. But if you get knocked down once, you’re done Since any char can keep him pin downed pretty easily.
Reg bingo is booty since any low can beat it and any throw can too. EX Bingo is too undependable for Wake up. Once you get past cody’s Normals n shit he’s just a sitting rag doll waiting for the match to end.
Anyway I think Cody is the new Sakura; however without her mixups but more dmg to conpensate for that.
His games last relatively longer. Defenitly top mid tier; he can beat any other char if he’s used perfectly. Thats saying you incorporate frame trapping and max combo dmg; which pretty much puts him like everyone else in the cast.
His worst match-up is probably Dhalsim. The most matchup I noticed to be in his favor was Blanka.
Cody is a very offensive character, his pokes and combos has a lot of damage and stun but i think his defense is not so good specially against fireball and rush down characters. Im having a lot of fun with cody but i dont see him in the top tier list, i think medium tier
There are safe times to pick up the knife. Its just you have to give up get up game and have the knife semi close to you. I think its just hard to use the knife slash’s well vs good opponents. But at the end of a match the knife is clutch.
