Good but would be visually inconsistent with the close vs far attacks thing they have going on. But their cr.mk buff to 3 frame startup would be better.
Honestly with the news of a new patch… sometimes in the future… i’ve been doing a lot of thinking… and will definitely post my thoughts on capcom unity.
Obviously everyone’s views are different… and don’t expect all the agree with me.
I think Blanka is a character made not to be top tier… kinda like Dan… like the others said… Capcom envisioned Blanka as a Beast that can move in and out… kinda like what Ves said… hit and run style. Whether that works in this game or not in top level competition i really don’t think that’s something Capcom primary objective… if anything… their primary objective is to bring as much style and diversity to the game to attract as many players as possible… the their secondary objective is to make the game more balance… to the point where characters aren’t exactly ‘hopeless’ …
I don’t think their objective is the make the most perfectly balance game.
Unfortunately… I think the current build of Blanka is pretty much on target… so i really don’t see how capcom will drastically change this… however…
if Capcom wanna further emphasize on the hit/run gimmick style…
they need to improve
1.
Hop (make it much better… or different… like be able to do move during hop… or throw…
reason: current issue with hop is… it’s really not that good… sure there are instances where it’s pretty good/gimmicky the way Capcom intends… like… hop into ultra… hop into other side into throw/electricity/normal… however… most of the time… all these options can easily get beaten if person mashes c.LP/c.LK… it’s retarded…
best example is… FA lvl 2 block… i get +1 which really kinda sucks… if they do c.LK tech… that pretty much beats my throw options… I don’t have charge after FA lvl 2… so i can’t upball him… cl.MK doesn’t jump over low… fortunately hop actually beats this… but the saddest part is… if they mash it… despite guessing correctly… you still get beat out by their mashing… which is kinda retarded…
Hard knockdown on certain specials or situations…
I don’t know about you guys… but honestly hate it when i’m cornered get a knockdown by ex upball/ex rainbow… but the situation haven’t really been improved… simply because… if they tech… they can recover quick enough to keep me cornered…
I think… making rainbow ball (all versions) with a hard knockdown is mandatory… the move already kinda sucks… with exception to ex… the regular version of this move is probably one of the least used specials in the entire game… and i only use it to… either end a match… or to do something gimmicky like hiding my charge… which i rarely do… otherwise I honestly don’t see anyone using this move at all… if they can make it hard knockdown… and maybe have the attribute of t-hawks ex dive when it blocked at tip… there MIGHT be more reasons to use
upball hitting air on counter giving a hard knockdown or ex upball hitting CH on ground giving hard knockdown will be great as well…
Unlikely gonna happen… but i mentioned before… FADC ball at any range… will fit in this list as well… will add on more ‘gimick’ to him
Coward Crouch have quicker start up and maybe full body invincibility for a few frames…
General improvments:
1.
Chainable normals…
s.LP?
c.LK?
c.LP?
reason:
I never really understood about the use of chainable normals before until i started playing Fei Long… and realizing… having them chainable… have the advantage of players not DPing you during your links… not to mention for Blanka… there’s practically no true block strings because of this… your best one is… jump in move , s.LPxx electricity… s.LP xx electricity again… if the range lets you. having some chains… will make combos a bit easier… but more importantly set up this other game when it’s blocked… because they are forced to block and can’t dp you in between… it does make his footsie game a tad better… vs now… if you’re trying to setup a frame trap… you’re pretty much ALWAYS in range for DP… you say you can bait out DP… and punish… well they can FADC it and be safe… and put you in mixup again… vs… a character like Fei Long… can use his chains to put you far out enough… where the moment you mash your DP… you whiff… and no chance of FADC …
the stuff found by Eternal are pretty good upgrades in general
c.HP hitting twice will be awesome.
Make U2 air MUCH faster…
Make U2 qcf qcf command instead 
-LAU
I’m a little disappointed at the lack of thought going into these posts. If you don’t have a character sweeping rationale for your change there’s really no point in suggesting it. You’ll just add to the sea of madness that’s already vast enough.
The reason they have ‘never listened to us before’ is because frankly, it seems like they were quite right not to.
Cr.hp - recovery reduction to -5 A normal of ours becomes safer. This is just a token improvement of a normal. Making our footsies a bit easier. Changes that make things easier are not what we’re looking for.
cr MK - startup reduced from 5F to 3F (!) recovery reduced by 1F. This would have been obscene. There’s no reason I can expect them to ever want to do this as it would obsolete cr.lk. That alone means there’s no reason to consider this change. Regardless of whatever testing they did that we have no understanding of the context for.
cr HK - Startup reduced to 5F active frames increased to 6F. Again. We have no idea what the context was for testing this. Yes stuff like this makes us a ‘better character’ but being a ‘bad character’ is not justification for random buffs. What’s the rationale. Why would they want to do this. How does this fix a problem with the game.
**Make U2 qcf qcf command instead ** The ramifications for this are pretty widespread. From character identity, to completely altering it’s use. You can’t just make charge moves not charge anymore without a lot of explanation. For a change like this I’d expect a lot of rationale, and case examples involving almost all of the cast.
4.Make U2 air MUCH faster… Again, why? Just so “it’s better cos right now it’s not very good” ? Why does our character need a two billion damage anti air ultra that forces or outright beats safe jumps? There MIGHT be good reasons for this change but without giving any it suggests no thought has gone into this change. If I read this as a designer I wouldn’t even add it to the list of things to consider or test without a lot more explanation.
3.c.HP hitting twice will be awesome. Sure it would. So why do we need it. Do we lack ways to break focus? Is that a gaping hole in our character design?
1.Chainable normals… Don’t get me wrong I’d love this for a million reasons. OSs and truestrings galore. But again, why does this fix our character? Plenty of characters have no chainable normals and do just fine. Maybe it is something we need. But “other characters like Fei have this thing we don’t have” is not a good rationale.
4.Coward Crouch have quicker start up and maybe full body invincibility for a few frames… Why? I really like the idea of changing things like coward crouch (unique moves) to be more useful. But if we do so, we need to establish the improvements or changes to the* role* of the move in the context of the game.
3.Unlikely gonna happen… but i mentioned before… FADC ball at any range… will fit in this list as well… will add on more ‘gimick’ to him What for? What would we do with this? Examples?
2.Hard knockdown on certain specials or situations… I think a lack of access to hard knockdown is a thing that definitely hurts our characters ability to convert footsies into momentum. But we need to be specific on exactly what we want to cause a KD, why, and how this would help.
1.Hop (make it much better… or different… like be able to do move during hop… or throw… “Make hope better” would be ignored off the bat. And not just because Hop is a very difficult move to balance. It’s hard to make the move very useful without making it game dominating. I think it has potential, and could be the defining aspect of our character if handled correctly. But what to we do to hop to get this? It’s a much tougher thing than most of you probably think. Being able to cancel a hop into stuff gives us an enormous mixup game just by being in a certain footsie range.
What do you think about getting rid of his close standing jab. What about simply changing close standing jab to have the same properties as far jab. I think this would actually fill a massive hole in our up close game, where blanka is more or less forced to curl into a ball and either tech, reversal or do nothing unless we’re at a big frame advantage. Again though, we need to justify it.
Here’s the absolute minimum I’d be happy with:
More frame-advantage after level 2 focus, dash
cr.lk, cr.lk should be a TRUE blockstring. No changes on hit.
More stuff:
Overhead ONLY on f.mp, not b.mp. close st.mp is such a great move but you can’t combo into ball outside of a jump
AA U2 should come out faster. It’s useless as and AA unless you’re playing someone who doesn’t know the match
Ground U2 should always do max damage if the opponent gets hit by both “ground pounds”
Less input leniency on horizontal balls. I still get too many accidental balls when I try to do walking jab xx elect from a defensive crouch. Blanka really doesn’t need that much leniency on his Blanka ball input.
Less recovery on cr.hp. Make it a decent footsie tool.
neutral j.hk should have more range than neutral j.lp, and have a smaller hurtbox. Smaller enough so that he can safe-jump 3f DPs.
You should be able to FADC balls from the same distance that you could in previous versions.
Better hit-box on his throws so that he can grab Abel out of a focus attack
close st.mp airborne after 3rd frame
Less recovery on coward crouch
Anti-air electricity should link into slide
Give MP and HP Supers decent uses outside of AA’s. Maybe give HP super rainbow ball arc so that you can punish fireballs or whatever. Let MP Super behave like HF Blanka’s v.ball except that it does a ton of (safe) chip if you position it properly. Whatever. Just give it interesting and creative uses.
Cr.hp - blanka isn’t a footsie monster. Cr.hp was unusable in a lot of matchups for being punishable last I played. Even when it’s not punishable on block it moves blanka from a neutral footsie position to being stuck in place allowing the opponent to dictate play. It’s his only non stubby poke, it should have some utility and would help blankas ground game,which should be good at since he isn’t a zoner or a rush down character.
Cr.mk - how would it make cr.lk obsolete? Cr.mk pushes you out of range for a tick throw. Cr.mk and probably cr.mk x2 doesn’t give enough time to charge for hit confirming super or ultra off crossup or hop crossup and It probably pushes too far out of range to connect anything more than a fierce ball alone. Blanka needs a 3 frame normal to help his close range punish, cr.tech and combo ability all of which are sub par.
Cr.hk - blankas damage comes from his mixup on knockdown. Being able to combo into knockdown gives blanka a way to deal potential damage. His sweep mixup isnt amazing because he hasn’t got a vortex, he doesn’t have an invincible move to option select with off a safe jump and his overhead mixup game isn’t that good. currently he has no way to open people up or to convert a small combo into a potential run of damage, ever consider simply forward throwing after a crumple when you’re behind because of the mixup you can run vs the straight damage that a combo would net you? It’s a viable option hell it’s probably optimal of you run the potential damage if you know how to safe jump and counterhit trap etc.
No point asking for balls, electricity or hops to be buffed they are damn annoying and people will be put off buying the game if that sort of blanka is good. Stealth buffs that make blanka a bigger threat through mixups, counter hits and footsies are the way to go.
By all means be the forum spokesperson on cap community. you criticise others for not putting thought into their suggestions but your offhand dismissal of proposed changes and your reasoning for doing so suggests you might have a thing or two to learn too!
- waits for ves to expose my outdated and incorrect arguments for the 3 changes lol
f.mp being overhead would make blanka worse. Losing the ability to do high/low mixup off of sweep would suck.
also nj.hp can safejump 3f dps like you want nj.hk too, it’s hard to setup though.
The way I see it is that Capcom sees Blanka’s unique tools as being unfun for people to play against, so they need to either decide that making the character make sense in the context of his tools is a good idea, or make him more generic and just let him play the hard knockdown/vortex game that the good characters play.
I actually agree with you about cr.hp. You have to use it because it covers a specific part of the screen now, especially with the nerfs to ball, but it’s not a good move. It’s unsafe on block, it’s focus bait, and it’s not particularly rewarding to land even. I don’t think the move would be dominate if it was safer on block, just I don’t think we’d be pissed to have to use it. The idea though is how does this play into overall changes.
cr.mk does not in fact put you out of range for a tick throw, in fact it’s actually a better tick starter than cr.lk is when you factor in kara throw and overall the only reason to use cr.lk would basically be to setup certain combo strings. Your crossup combo stance doesn’t really make sense when you factor in your change to…
cr.hk, this is actually a buff I’ve wanted for a long time, however the not being able to get charge argument goes out the window when you can just do cr.mk, cr.lk, st.lp xx ball as a string vs most character, but most importantly just being able to do cr.mk/cr.lk(cr.lk) cr.mk cr.hk as a bnb opens things up a lot. Every sweep knockdown from Blanka puts the opponent in a true guessing game situation currently, but he struggles to actually create those knockdowns. His high/low bnbs will be confirms to sweep then lead back into the same situation over and over creating an actual high/low/kara throw/hop(to beat reversals) vortex.
If you want Blanka to be a high/low vortex character the cr.mk and cr.hk changes are exactly whats needed to turn him into that, but is that the archetype of character that we want? It also kind of kills comboing into elec or ball because why do that unless you need the slight bonus damage to kill or are comboing to super?
I think having a cohesive idea of where to take the character is hard especially when you don’t know the intent of the developers, but ideally I’d like to see the character’s tools that he currently has just be made stronger than changing his playstyle once again.
At least now there’s some actual discussion happening.
I wasn’t saying these tools should be buffed in a black and white sense. I was asking how we improve them as mechanics. When I say ‘improve’ I don’t mean making blanka more powerful. I mean improving the game.
horiball and upball currently create the dumbest match up in the entire game (Blanka - Hawk). Horiball especially appears to me to be a terribly defined special. What is it actually for. Against T-hawk it’s infinite free chip at a lot of close distances excluding an exceptional read from hawk. Against the rest of the cast, it’s either a replacement combo ender when electricity doesn’t work, and a lot of strengths of it are still punished on hit. Its other use is simply moving around the stage, but the hitbox is so bad that it’s not useful to approach other than for gimmick throw/elec ‘mixups’ which have a universal counter. EX Horiball is still the only well designed hori ball variant. The others are simply confused tools that don’t really make any sense.
When I talk about improving something like horiball, I mean fixing everything that’s wrong with it. Including the fact it’s annoying for low level players to deal with. Give the horiball a true function and make sure that everything about the move is themed to that function.
What if the point of horiball (just as an example) was to actually start offensive momentum for the character on hit? It already deals less damage than electricity and is far less safe unless confirmed, but can be combo’d much more consistently from further ranges than electricity can be. Perhaps horiball should cause KD anywhere as has been previously suggested, but also leave Blanka closer to the opponent on hit and block. Which would cure dumb stuff like the T-hawk problem and make ‘random balls’ less of an infuration to low level players, while making their actual purpose more clear, being driven away from a gimmick tool into a specialized combo ender that emphasizes positioning over damage. That’s just a building block of an idea. There’s all sorts of things we might do. What is this character supposed to be.
Everybody hates our character, including us it seems half the time. How do we make something players will actually like. Don’t be scared of big changes to fix big problems, but discuss and think through what will happen to the game if a change happened.
I’m not sure I see the point in trying to make our character more like the established ‘good characters’. Both from a design perspective and player perspective this doesn’t seem productive. It firstly reduces variety in the game which is what nobody particularly wants, and secondly and most importantly, giving us tools ‘like’ the top tier is not going to suddenly make the character more viable. Because the top tier will still have the best versions of those tools. This is classically known as the old ‘Mortal Kombat’ style of balancing. I don’t think it really works.
Ves cr.lk x3 is the only way to land ultra off a wakeup hop or shallow crossup isn’t it? Didn’t know about the throw thing I thought it pushed out of range.
I hate neutral jumping and landing on spiral arrow or rush punches etc even though I expected them and jumped and stuck out my beefy 2 legged j.hk and I get beat, or they overshoot and pass under me. I need a hitbox fix on n.j.mk/hk
You want big changes? Remember the sf2 anime blanka vs zangief? http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=5Hm7vdZC4EU During neutral throw mash on punch to add shocking damage or burn ex to up damage further.
If i had to be asked what i’d want changed i’d probably say something like
c.HP is less minus. Maybe -5 or 6? i just don’t like getting rekka on block…
c.HK is less minus OR starts up on 5. Probably less minus haha…
c.MK is better on block and hit.
cs.MK is airborne and is +1 on block.
fs.MP is faster startup same hit/block.
fs.LP is +1 on block and +4 on hit.
increase his dash speed so you’re something like -1 on lvl 1 FA and then +4 or something on lvl 2.
Any or all of these.
I look at balrog vs blanka… and blanka basically has a few more AA options and then a slide. Then balrog has like +7 on his normals on hit… and +4 on block and it chains like LOL? Why does he get that! yeah he doesn’t have a crossup but wtf. Why are my normals overall such doodoo.
I would gladly trade any sort of mixup for the threat of 2f link into Ultra 1. This change would improve his frame trap game a lot. I don’t think Blanka’s high/low mixup game is very scary anyway.
Mehtbh
First thanks for reading my entire post. I have put some thought to some of the changes but I guess more on some points than others.
First I wanna REPEAT what I said… I personally feel… Blanka doesn’t really need too much fix simply because I feel like Capcom have already placed him where I would imagine a ‘gimmicky/just for laugh/annoying’ character at mid tier… He has tools to beat pretty much all character… he does have bad match ups but most of them aren’t to the extent where it’s broken.
So the changes I have suggested before, are more like wishful improvements… more than how you see… how does it ‘fix’ blanka… to me there’s nothing severe to be fixed… that doesn’t mean i think he’s top tier… and the suggestion i’ve made to me will make him a better character… that’s all.
some of Blanka’s weakness are…
-
lack of comeback combos… if you’re down in life… there’s hardly much you can do to make a comeback for damage… because of the way he’s built he can’t exactly walk forward… do random DP FADC ultra… the fact that he has to maintain charge means if he’s on an offense… he pretty much loses charge unless he’s jumping in… which is pretty much where his only option lies if you want big damage… other than that you can choose U2 and hope your FA hits him… otherwise… your best bet is… a correct guess or a good ‘hop’ into knockdown (one way or another) then follow your knockdown with a mixup that hopefully leads to big damage…
-
His pokes are amazing… but unlike other characters… he’s got nothing to follow up with… and it’s weak to focus for most parts… this is why i mentioned. c.HP… it fixes at least ONE of the two problems with his pokes. honestly… even if c.HP hits twice… it’s still not that good… it’s still pretty high risk… to me… whenever i throw out a c.HP my mentality is similar to Ken throwing out a fireball… if they guess it’s coming… i’m screwed.
In reply to some of the stuff you mentioned:
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Chainable normals… you said it all… and as I mentioned… it’s an improvement might open some new opportunities… but it’s not a fix…
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Ball FADC any range… this imo fits Blanka because it does make him more ‘gimmicky’ at the same time it will make characters think twice before punishing a ball… It lets Blanka to either attempt to continue offense by cancelling into a FADC forward dash… or be a bit more defense but still maintain safety with FADC backdash. You can’t abuse it because it cost 2 bars… but it will make the character more interesting and open up more options. It can even add a little more damage on hit which might promote some sort of comeback…
-
Hard knockdown… i think i mentioned the reason before… the soft knockdown especially when you’re cornered… you pretty much remain in the corner… you can’t get out… at least not safely.
-
Hop… Imagine… if you do Hop, Punch (any punch) it will make Blanka do an attack in mid hop that knocksdown or leads in significant frame advantage… but to balance things out… on block it’s punishable… so you can’t just press the hop attack whenever… on the other hand… it will beat out lows that it hops over… Why not… makes the character more interesting… gives an extra option… makes him more of a beast… and it’s not godlike because it’s punishable.
-
U2 Air… others mentioned why already… so not gonna repeat.
others:
b+HP for overhead… so that we can do cl. MP and still maintain charge… that will change the game quite a lot… it’ll make U1 combos… significantly easier… and certain combos much easier to do… which will up Blanka’s damage overall… and honestly… who the hell uses cl.HP
fox:
Well… honestly comparing Boxer and Blanka is kinda pointless… especially when the two characters are sooo different and the play style is extremely different… there’s plenty of stuff Boxer can’t do when compared and it’s not just slide…
-LAU
The hop thing I’ve always wanted because it would be like small jumps in cvs2. There was a larger amount of landing frames after the small j.attack which were only special cancellable. So you wouldn’t be able to combo off it with normals and on block it would be negative unless you cancel into jab elec. but it would be a bit too good for the sfiv engine I think, not to mention beyond the scope of what the devs are willing to do for rebalancing
I won’t be too sure on that… Sure it’s extra work but think about Hakan… in 2012 they gave him extra options/commands as well… If they are really lazy they can simply make hop into something that looks like a ball… and make it work like rainbow ball… so if they block it… you’re screwed… if they get hit… you get knockdown… obviously… if you can link it to any normals… that’ll just be insanely good… and j.MK from hop will be the ultimate ambiguous crossup
-LAU
Say overhead did become back fierce. What are the consequences of that. We get access to our close MP. This would give us charge combos off of some frame traps, and a solid new close punish combo (cl.mp,cr.mk,st.lp,ball (super)). But you’d only get that on unsafe moves that left the opponent close enough to trigger cl.mp. It’s nice but I’m not convinced it actually does all that much for us. Yeah it combo’s into U1 with charge but only from positions you could do this easily anyway. At 6f start up you couldn’t naturally combo into it either. I suppose there’s the opportunity for things like meaty cr.lk, cl.mp, ultra1.
One of our biggest problems is that it’s very hard for us to convert hits into damage OR position OR even advantage other than from ambiguous jump ins. I feel like character specific ranges on so many different tools is a big player in this problem. If we block a Rekka we can jab Fei. In this situation it sucks that ball is just out of KD range (making our punish… punishable) and by extension just out of super range (meaning Fei has no reason to respect a punish, the risk and reward is massively in his favour.)
Electricity combos feel like they were almost never even intended with how character specific they are. If elec was reliable from even a few pixels further away certain match-ups (cough, vega) would be much more manageable.
It’s little things like this that just seem like accidental holes to me. It would seem strange if the developers knew full well that elec cancels would mostly whiff and that HP ball would still be unsafe on hit at all but the closest ranges. They already moved in the direction of trying to improve HP balls use when they made it knock down at all, but made it only the first few frames in order to keep this change to its intent of making it a viable combo ender. (They also increased the damage.) It doesn’t seem unreasonable that they could think to increase the number of KD/FADC/Super Cancel frames. (Which are all one number in the code afaik.)
Our thread starts on the 29th bu-tu-wuh.
Also the weeks themselves seem to show some understanding for presently perceived tiers:
“Week 4 (4/12-4/18) Cammy, Seth, Akuma, Viper, Adon, Ibuki, El Fuerte, Fei Long, Oni”
Week 4 gon’ be gooooooood.
You would getter a better punish after a blocked DP for example. close st.mp, cr.mk xx HP ball does 267 (380) without meter. cr.mk, st.lp xx EX Elec does 235 (330) and needs 1 bar.
I learned the hard way that balls are still unsafe on hit against Claw.
Only on DPs that left you close enough to trigger cl.mp. A lot of DPs require you to move in order to punish, like Cammy. At that point the things you’d be able to do with cl.mp you can do now anyway.
Cammy is one of the exceptions (like Yun, and DPs that land behind you). In every other case this would be a damage buff. Blanka doesn’t really do big damage outside of Ultra and jump ins, especially without meter. The only time you wouldn’t want this behaviour is for rockcrusher into jab or Ultra on wakeup, which is really situational. In fact, I don’t even want overhead on f.mp either. I want to walk forward and smack opponents in the face with close st.mp after a blocked jump in or on wakeup, so maybe LAU’s idea of overhead on b.hp is good. Noone uses close st.hp. In this way we lose access to a useless move (outside a situational super combo) while retaining everything else we currently have and gaining more damage and counter-hit options.