How does Honda defend against Chun jumping in or how does he get in on Guile? I think he needs to be able to HHS in the air.
F that. The top ranked player on GGPO and HD Remix XBL mains Zangief. Zangief is fine as-is, any character who beats RyuKen is sitting pretty. Sure, he loses to some characters, but who doesn’t? Even Dhalsim and Boxer have their rough matches. (Notably, Boxer loses to Gief.)
T.hawk and Fei, the jury is still out as far as I’m concerned. Safe-on-block condor dive is straight goofy, and the easier SPD motion means T.Hawk can pull off grab loops (e.g. SPD, walk up, tick->SPD) with relative ease (I’ve seen it done). Fei is a skill character, sure, but if you get off one of his fairly simple 5+ -hit combos, that’s 60+% damage, TOD if it dizzies. He’s still got the single best meaty in the game, the best corner lock-down this side of Boxer, and his chicken wing, with it’s sick priority, is a FB motion, now. He’s likely good to go.
That leaves the English b!tch. At low-to-mid levels of play, she’s OK. Not great, but she can mix things up enough to make even skilled players nervous. She’s useless at tournament-level play (note: I mean real, national tournaments, not locals), but I’m not sure that being able to consistently place in tourneys should be a qualification for any character. Sirlin gave her safer drills and sane special motions, that’s good enough for this Cammy veteran.
Really, I’ve never thought that Capcom cared to balance the game, and well they shouldn’t have. There are just as many people who like to play overpowered or underdog characters as there are people who wish that all of the characters were equally powerful. Easier to satisfy the first bunch, impossible to satisfy the latter. Sirlin’s approach of compressing the tiers instead of trying to rearrange them was a great decision.
This was possible in ST…except the “loop” you refer to is impossible now with the whiff. You can’t “loop” 100% anymore, it’s fairly easy to reverse now with the missing grab frames.
Not saying they should change the whiff, just that this was possible before in ST…so really that part of T.Hawk hasn’t changed in the way your talking about.
Actually, there’s a third option: turtle back at 'em, as you yourself have suggested.
I am still waiting to fight a really good Honda with Cammy Sirlin, now that I’ve gotten more used to her. So far, my record vs. him is actually in my favor.
aww, no one freaked out over my joke, oh well 
Seems like everyone is doing it, so I’ll give my two shits worth on Remix balance, or I guess mostly Honda balance at this point.
I don’t think Honda is too powerful in HD Remix, just his matchups are still too skewed, although he does seem to do somewhat better against fireballers than before.
Anyway here goes:
Introduce some sort of jab headbutt vulnerability, but still allow it to go through fireballs, and give it original ST range- net effect helps against fireballers, hurts against non-fireballers.
Remove stored ochio and keep reduced Ochio dizzy, but give him back old ochio bounceback, allowing for ochio “loops”. Button press command throws are stupid and have no place in the game. However, now every single character can reversal out of the tick loop in the corner, and that plus reduced dizzy doesn’t make it too powerful, while keeping Honda in range for attack after ochio. This should help him to stay in once he gets in against fireballers.
T-Hawk loses his whiff- completely unneccessary, command throws simply don’t need to be nerfed with whiffs in ST, with the possible exception of Gief’s SPD and I’m pretty sure that SPD doesn’t need a whiff either. Hawk should get a slight increase in bounceback after typhoon as much as the extra bounceback after super in order to break up “teh godly loop of theory fighter death”.
Yes, it was possible. What I wrote was that is easier, now. That means the percentage chance that Hawk players miss this tactic has gone down, just as Cammy’s hooligan roll is more of a threat now that it’s butt easy to do. That’s significant.
The whiff animation is a non-factor. We’re talking about a tick->grab loop. I’ve seen it done.
Huh? When a move is easier to perform, a player is more likely to try it, and he’s more likely to succeed. How is that not a significant change?
Look at all the Chun-Li and Honda players who say that their games have stepped up because lightning legs and hands come out easier.
Seriously, what am I missing, here?
I am so down with that. T.Hawk gets a safe-on-block dive, but no nerf in Mexican Typhoon bounce-back, WTF??
Everything you are saying about Hawk is wrong. Literally everything.
The motion change for the 360 makes very little difference, it’s not like it was ever hard. People have been doing throw loops for 15 years. You say “I’ve seen it done” like it’s some amazing sight to behold or something…it’s like “Ryu can shoot blue energy - I’ve seen it with my own eyes!”
Ticking with the 360 was always done by doing the 360 motion while in animation frames and ending in D/B. Zero chance to accidentally jump, you’re never holding up during neutral state. If you whiffed a walk up 360 because you were too far away you’d usually get a jump backwards or straight up, which is no worse than a whiff is now. And if you got a jump backwards because you couldn’t do the motion properly - well you need more practice.
Throw loops are not easier now, they are much harder, because a single well-timed reversal will destroy the loop whereas before it would not. The loop now has more points of possible failure. Even if you perfectly execute a safe jump with proper spacing and timing you can still end up with nothing for your efforts.
About Honda, he’s always been a poorly designed character. Torpedo and uppercut are in no way comparable. Characters like Ryu and Guile have to choose an anti-air move or an anti-ground move – for Honda those two moves are the same.
If you take away invincibility on Honda’s torpedo, how does he escape Zangief and Hawk ticks?
If you make his torpedo punishable on block, how in the world does he even compete against any projectile character? He still loses those matchups badly as is.
I guess Blanka is a stupid design as well?
Have you even used Zangief against good Hondas, Blankas and Dhalsims? Fuck the top player on XBL or GGPO or whatever. Main Zangief and try to get around Honda’s turtling, Blanka’s st.Strong and Dhalsim’s Fires and limbs. You will change your tune, I guarantee it.
I’m not saying the low tiers should be buffed into monsters, or that counter picking should be eliminated (it’s a part of SF), but saying that they should be buffed a tiny bit more.
I agree that Honda’s Torpedo is fine. That’s his SRK and it shouldn’t be punishable. But his Ochio needs to be unstoreable, his Super can be storeable, and that’s pretty much all the nerfs I wanna see for Honda. Honestly, Honda is a great character design, it’s just that ppl are turning Honda bashing into a SF tradition.
The one thing that Honda really needs is a good diet
I pretty much only play Gief these days, and Honda is the only character I take issue with. The fact that he can do so much chip damage with HHS, has a torpedo that is almost impossible to counter with Geif, and high stamina + command throw is just godly.
I will say that an Akuma player who is really good can be extremely hard to beat also. However, to me this is balanced by his low health, and the fact that he is a harder character to play then Honda, where all you have to do is hold DB, and occasionally button mash for HHS, and you can pretty much be successful against Gief with just doing that.
So if I were in charge of balance changes, this is what I would do:
Gief changes:
-Lariat counters torpedo most of the time now. It already counters the Blanka Roll and Psycho Crusher 100% of the time, but the Torpedo has always been an odd exception in that it can defeat the Lariat more often then not.
Akuma changes:
-Raging Demon: moves a bit slower, more vulnerable to jumping attacks (larger hitbox), more recovery time after the move, does 40% damage instead of 50%. It would still be a deadly grab, it’s just that you would have to take a little bit more risk in attempting this move rather then just getting a ‘freebie’ 50% damage once in a while as is now the case. Akuma would still keep his other tools that make him a really good character now (invulnerable DPs, juggling Hurricane Kick, Air Fireball, Teleport, and larger offensive hitboxes then Ken/Ryu)
Sirlin reduced the range on fireball destroying jab headbutt because it hits sagats long arms during his fireballs.
Ryu’s dragon punch hits slides/sweeps, Guile’s flash kicks hit most stuff on the ground.
As for akuma, I don’t think he’d be half as bad if he couldn’t do that air fireball to super trap.
Doesn’t he have buttslam as a reversal? Imo any nerfs to jab headbutt should allow him to choose an escape from different situations using either buttslam, jab headbutt or reversal ochio. I really don’t know enough about the buttslam though to comment on what type of jab headbutt vulnerability would be complemented by buttslam, though I’m sure thats a possible option.
Essentially the idea would be to make him choose between one of those moves with their different properties, instead of being able to rely on “anything you do I jab headbutt” against non-fireball characters.
Make it go just short of hitting Sagat’s arms from full screen.
Some jumpins and especially neutral jumping normals stuff jab headbutt
Right, that’s why when I posted my ideas for tweaking Honda, he’d have to get a LOT of help along with any nerfs. I would make the Torpedo hittable at start and make the Buttslams his DPs, so his DPs would be more like everyone else’s: punupon block.
This sounds hypocritical, of course, because I’m all for Cammy’s DP to be safer. I would definitely design Cammy around that idea. It’s easily possible to tweak her so that it’s not too good. I mean, look at her in vanilla ST… does it really help her that much? No. But Honda’s Jab Headbutt is tied to so many of his other moves because D/B is so potent. I’d either weaken EVERYTHING he has and keep the Jab Torpedo how it is, or I’d weaken the Jab Torpedo. Frankly, I think the first option is WORSE because the potential to really screw up Honda is greater on the second option.
Honestly, I think he is. But for different reasons than I think Honda is a stupid design. I actually 100% disagreed with the decision to make the Blanka Ball recover quicker: the frame advantage you got after Blocking it was its weakness, even if you couldn’t hit him back. At least you could advance on him a couple of steps. Now that it recovers faster, the fight has become really hard for characters like Gief, when that fight was already super hard to begin with. Zangief was given nothing to compensate for Blanka’s improvements. I would have made the Blanka Ball bounce further away so it would be harder to hit back, but allow you to advance on him so that, once you cornered Blanka, the Blanka Ball becomes a liability. It would create a much more interesting dynamic than how it is right now.
Back to the Honda/Blanka comparison. The reason why I think Honda’s is worse than Blanka is because Blanka can trade, and the Blanka Ball is much easier to hit. If I do a Meaty DP, predicting a Blanka Ball, I win. In most cases, Honda’s Jab Torpedo’s invincibility outlasts everyone else’s. I don’t have the Yoga Hyper Book in front of me right now, but I’m pretty sure Honda has much more invincibility than Cammy, Fei Long, and T.Hawk.
Sadly, it IS just short of hitting the arms. Sagat is based on New Sagat, and his fists are hittable. The Jab Headbut, if you move even a step from the wall, can hit Sagat’s hands on a Low Tiger at the distance it travels now.
Nothing stuffs the Jab Headbutt. I’m talking about using it as anti-air, not charging at people for no reason. The move hits before it can be hit. It is physically impossible to be stuffed.
Honestly, blitz… can you watch those videos posted in the Confirmed Patch thread and say Honda really is a good character design? That Honda vs. Fei was about the most optimal way for either character to play that match.
- James
How do you time it vs chun’s jumping forward? I know the timing for everyone else I’ve fought against so far and its really easy to anti air with jab or super HB