I think people will be pretty smart about not using red focus on blanka.
His only 2in1s armor break or can be mashed to break focus and he doesn’t have chains so it’s not exactly prime for him, especially when he’s poor at chasing focus backdashes down at the moment.
There will be some funny situations though.
Mashable to break regular focus, right? You can’t break Red Focus except by using armor-break moves or reversals. At the actual stage of development, Red Focus can absorb infinite hits, tough this may change until the final version of Ultra.
But I agree that there’s not much point using Red Focus against Blanka most of the time. You may consider using after a blocked elec, to absorb the attempt to walk forward and st.LP xx Elec. But what will you do then? Blanka recovers so fast from elec, it’s pretty risky to try and punish the absorbed elec with Focus Attack or dash forward at the cost of 2 bars
Potential combo stuff with usf4 changes, some of it will be character specific.
cr.fierce, red focus, cr.mk, u1 446 damage
level 2 focus, cl.mp, cr.mk, cr.mk xx hp ball 310 damage
j.hk, cl.mp, cr.mk, cr.mk xx hp ball 402 damage
cr.mk, cr.mk, u1 488 damage
cr.mk, cr.mk xx hp ball xx super 454 damage
cr.mk, cr.mk xx mp ball xx super 516 damage
ch cr.mk, cr.hp 188 damage
Also mashed to break regular focus, but the thing is if you cancel the focus to try to escape the elec you’re going to get hit as you dash with a large part of the cast or by all as you release.
If you I do meaty ex elec and deejay does red focus he takes at minimum 340~ damage and if he’s slow on the uptake with backdashing he might just take 500+. The risk reward is not good.
Had this brilliant idea of using s.HK xx RF for crumple stun this morning but when i tested realize it’s CL.HK that you can FA not far s.HK (which is the good one… 3 frames)
anyways… here are the moves that you can combo with FA lvl 1 which means you can probably do it with RF in Ultra.
CL.HP
CL.HK
CL.MK (i doubt this will work in ultra because the first hit is now airborne but if it does… :D)
c.HP
LP, MP Ball
LK,MK,HK Upball (in Ultra)
everything else can be blocked in time.
-LAU
Are there currently any airborn normals that get hit by cr.lks? If not, this buff could be massive. Is there any other move currently like it in the game? 5 frame startup, unthrowable, goes over lows and combo able for like 230 damage.
If it goes over lows then Is naked hop/dash > st.mk viable now?
Hop > throw was always a desperation move I fell back on (it was vanilla, I didn’t even know what option selects were!) and sure good players would very often jab or throw me, or at least tech the throw, but I’m thinking if they were usually hitting me out of the startup of my throw and NOT the recovery of the hop then it may be a viable way to get in. The fact my throw was teched makes me think that is the case.
blocked focus > cl.mk is probably the strongest application. For how many focus attacks blanka is able to make a character block, he’s not able to capitalize properly.
Rose cl.MK was more or less the only one that had the features you mentioned on the list.
it’s so good that if you kara cl.MK into throw it can beat everybody’s throw (including super/ultra throws)
cl.MK on hit can lead to most combos of rose choice.
-LAU
what kind of sucks is that even with these changes blanka still isn’t really good at anything.
I’d imagine he’d lose to roughly the same amount of characters that he does now, and still stay pretty low tier.
Well can’t say I disagree with you, however these changes do address some of his needs and give us more damage and pressure.
Cl.mk is gonna give us an option that wasn’t available for us before.
C.mk +5 will better our footsie game a bit and making us dish out more damage for a potential comeback
Hp ball will give us new pressure tool from the knockdown
Red focus will make landing ultras much easier
Delayed wake up is gonna make some safe jumps and OS completely useless, and for blanka who easier to play defensively it will benefit him more than others.
I don’t know think he will ever be top tier but I think he will stay middle tier.
I don’t think so. Blanka up close was a complete non threat before. You could throw or frame trap with cl.mp but it was shitty and prone to being beaten by 3 frame cr.lk. If cl.mk goes over lows on the first frame then your opponent is going to be put in a 50/50 when you get up close because any attempt to cr. or stand tech a throw will be beaten.
I used to blow up so many people with goukens cl.mp > cr.hp. His cl.mp had loads of blockstun so it gave ample time to beat cr.tech with the following cr.hp. Blankas new cl.mk should provide even more mileage because it’s unthrowable and also can be used in defensive situations to air reset yourself and offensively vs grapplers on their wakeup.
Even if you know blankas oki set ups they suck in comparison to other characters, so variable wakeup timing is a buff IMO. Blanka loses matchups on his back but not anymore. Neutral game based characters got a boost and blanka is pretty good in neutral playing footsies.
The other buffs are minor more or less:
Upball fadc neuters your offense because blanka is so much more dangerous with super so I won’t use it often.
Hp ball knocking down is good for combos but crossup ball is only worth the risk reward if you use it to close a round or to stun. Otherwise it’s 150 damage vs a raw ultra to the chops.
Cr.mk is a nice damage boost on optimum combos and makes u1 combos easier but doesn’t really change blankas game in any way.
yeah I mean I think he’s better, it’s just other characters are getting buffed too. It seems hard.
option selecting u1 off of a cl.mk works against slower backdashes with short range, seems possibly useful especially with like safejump > delayed st.mk
With EX Upball being FADC-able now, is it possible to hope that you can follow it up with Ultra 1 like Boxer’s headbutt-ultra combo? Or the fact that Capcom didn’t say anything means that it’s still probably just a pipe dream?
i dont think you can hold charge during the hit stop and the forward dash to actually execute the ultra after the dash.
You can do Up+Back for the Ex upball > FADC > Ultra using charge partitioning, but I don’t think you can connect any Ultra afterwards… ground Ultra 2 does juggle, but it’s pretty slow on startup
where have you seen that done?
Well, you can do that with Guile (with both his Ultras), so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for Blanka.
Nevermind, I saw this video, but it does seem to be fake or modded version on PC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVtP6U-endY
Altough Ultra 2 has a shorter charging time for Blanka…
can’t charge partition in sf4
i may be wrong, but i dont think its about charge time of the move, it’s about the length of time the game stores charge after you release the joystick from the charging position. If your dash is quick enough you can finish inputting the ultra after the dash finishes.
with blanka you can raw dash into ultra or super i think… (memory is failing me!), but when you fadc a special move and try to ultra some extra frames get added along the way, perhaps the dash is 1 frame longer after a fadc and it’s my theory that the hitstop of the special move hitting the opponent slows blanka down enough that the length of time that elapses after leaving the charge position is too long to complete the ultra input before the dash is complete.
of course best person to ask if it actually can or can’t work is Ves. outdated vanilla player here!