Blanka ULTRA SSF4 Changes

Yeah I watched the video. He said Blanka ball’s recovery is getting reworked. Its probably getting buffed and I was getting upset over nothing!

I don’t think it’s gonna get buffed.

The logical solution would be all hori-balls KD on hit from any distance (like in SFxTK) and nerf a little more the recovery on block for MP and maybe LP balls, to make life a little less miserable for T. Hawk players against Blanka.

But if they go this path, they can adjust non-EX vertical balls as well. They’re ridiculously punishable on hit…

I actually do think ball is going to get buffed. They mentioned in the dev blog that they are aware of how bad the move is.

Holy crap, cr. mk and cr. lk buff? Blanks will be much better, granted who knows how the other characters will pan out. Still, great news if true. 2 frame plinkable ultra not off a jumpin, counter hit or overhead…sounds wild.

Hi All,

made some edits to this thread, changed the title, added Actual Changes and Rumor Changes

So what do you guys think of Both Ultras/Red Focus and how it’s gonna effect Blanka?

This is my personal thoughts,

Both Ultras should be desirable for Blanka simply because both his Ultras are fairly decent, he’s kinda lucky enough to have two useful Ultra. On certain match ups like Ibuki/C.Viper or maybe even El Fuerte I tend to feel slightly confused during Ultra picking process, simply because I like to use U2 air against those characters, having U2 air will definitely make them think twice when they use certain ambiguous jump in setups, but at the cost of losing the 4 frame U1 that i can use to punish or even take the risk of throwing it out to beat their frame trap games, but now with both Ultra I get the best of both worlds.

Obviously there’s other match ups where having just one Ultra is good enough

as for Red Focus (RF), I think this will only benefit Blanka, since he sucks against regular focus in the first place the Red Focus doesn’t really change anything for him but on the other hand, Blanka having a slightly faster FA compare to the rest of the cast and a pretty good long range FA seems like it’ll benefit him. Now what I wonder is can i use RF to cancel my moves and still be able to absorb.
Example:
Horizontal Ball xx FA right now is very mediocre to crappy simply because I will probably get hit after Horizontal Ball gets blocked and me holding FA will just get me hit

but Horizontal Ball xx RF if it actually absorbs hits afterwards I feel like this is a huge game changer. Imagine this scenario, Ryu have full super meter, you do c.HP xx RF he reacts quickly without thinking much trying to punish your blocked c.HP just to see that it gets absorbed completely then he gets hit by the RF… how crazy is that. I can think of many different examples of how this can benefit Blanka a bit more than other characters simply because Blanka already got not much to lose but now he’s got a new tool. Fireball game has just gotten significantly worse.

-LAU

If you are talking about ball -> fadc -> red focus, that would probably take up 4 bars (2 bars for FADC, and possibly 2 more for red focus). In that case, it probably isn’t worth it. Overall, my initial reaction to red focus is that I hate it, and dual ultras I also hate. Anyways, maybe I will end up liking it, but I’m definitely not big on U2 - only use it for about 4 matchups. Other characters have much better complementary ultras in my opinion. Could be that I also hate the motion for U2.

U2 is just not that good. Only matchups where I would want both that I can think of are Ibuki and maybe Sim because you pretty much only want u2 there as a check to setups.

Not to mention that, with the damage reduction when you choose both ultras, it’s not even a good chip damage ultra to finish the round.

What I don’t know is why they’ve mentioned the red focus if so much about it is still undefined. It seems they haven’t decided how much meter it will cost, so until more solid info is released about it, I don’t know what to think about it.

My initial reaction is dislike, red focus doesn’t seem a good idea, but I’ll wait for the location tests to see and hear more about it.

I use U2 vs all characters right now although i realy like overhead into u1

I just like chipping and FA into AA u2.
Might change when comboing into u1 gets easier

U2 is my go-to ultra everytime I’m playing online.

Nothing compares to the satisfaction that I get finishing a round with Ground U2.

And sometimes AA U2 is useful too. It’s a nice “hail mary” ultra sometimes

I was watching the Nishikin videos from Topanga B League (the free ones) and it seems he really likes to use U2.

Whenever he’s really down on life he starts to use FA a lot to get a crumple and AA U2.

the thing is that crumple into AA U2 and crumple into cr.mk u1 do the same damage.

U1 has less chip setups but they are way more reliable and do more overall chip.

I disagree with using u2 as the primary ultra.

I think there’s some clear advantages of U2, this discussion has been mentioned many times.

There’s certain match ups I changed from using U1 to U2, simply because there’s more situations where I can easily score a U2 chip kill whereas U1 it’s much harder to get into that scenario for guaranteed chip kills. Other scenarios is simply because it might make my opponent change their play strategy a bit more compared to U1 on certain match ups.

-LAU

I havent played AE yet, but watching some vids it would be nice if you could FADC blankas slide, like how Bison can

I’d take less recovery and lower blockstun so that safe sliding is more viable as the threat of focus goes down and it can be used more effectively as a poke as you wouldn’t be crumpled as often.

Dunno if this counts, but I was tweeting with Justin and M1x4h on this and Justin says that he thinks Blanka balls should always knockdown.

At this point in the game I guess this should be a no brainer.

I’d accept that even if Capcom had to revert to SSFIV damage to “even things out” or something.

its not 100% but i think they take the unblockable change from sfxt
so blankas jmk is in ultra useless because you can block it in both directions in sfxt when it is not a clear crossover
i hope he get big combo buffs his damage output is way to low right now

Dream list:

  • Horizontal balls always knockdown on hit, on block remains the same
  • If hori ball can’t be considered airborne on startup (so you can’t be throw) because of FADC, at least make it throw invincible, it’s so stupid to be thrown during its startup
  • Revert hori ball hitbox/hurtbox to Super values, right now it’s easily stuffed
  • Make the first active frame of regular electricity a little wider, making combos into it whiff less. It’s so annoying to hit a combo where elec should definitely hit but see it whiff and you get heavily punished. If it’s just to much to change this to all versions, at least give this buff to HP elec, it has the slowest startup

I feel other problem with the character is like, his match ups are just bad vs all the top characters akuma, fei, cammy. Even if he got some buffs I dont know if it would be enough to beat these characters. Let alone seth, and having hard enough time trying to do anything to Bison

Seth is pretty manageable with unblockables/whiff setups. You can also focus backdash out of his DP so you don’t have to take pressure. I don’t have a losing record vs. any Seth player over the last 6 months.

I do okay vs. PR Rog’s Fei too, and Akuma is bad but winnable.

Cammy is absolutely godawful though, I’m just glad there are so few good ones.

@selfmadeking89 if you setup j.mk properly in sfxt it’s not blockable both ways, you just can’t throw it out willy nilly, you need good setups.