Characters That Suffered the Biggest Nerfs Between Two Games

Which characters do you think have suffered the biggest nerf between two games? Here’s a list of what I know so far.

UMvC3 Morrigan -> MvCI Morrigan

UMvC3 Chris -> MvCI Chris

UMvC3 Zero -> MvCI Zero

SF3: 2I Sean -> SF3: 3S Sean

MvC1 Mega Man -> MvC2 Mega Man

MvC1 Chun-Li -> MvC2 Chun-Li

SCIII Xianghua -> SCIV Xianghua

SCIV Ivy -> SCV Ivy (Seriously, I hated Soul Calibur V in general)

T4 Jin -> T5 Jin

T6 Xiaoyu -> TTT2 Xiaoyu

TTT1 Lei -> T4 Lei

BTW, this is my first topic on the forums since I couldn’t find any introduction forum. So, go easy on me. =3

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The only answer to this question is 3S Sean. Any other answers are invalid.

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Good answer.

T4 Jin says “Hi.”

So does Soul Calibur 1 Maxi.

Their respective follow ups were dunking the sun over The Meg.

I am not savvy enough to comment on some of those, but there are a few characters on your list that don’t fit the description. For example, Xiaoyu actually got buffed in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 with some new tools and better properties on existing moves. Despite the removed JF laser scraper, which few could use, T5 Jin gained mobility, a dodging stance, and distance closing karate chops into kick making him roughly upper mid. T4 Lei was not a complete departure from TTT1 Lei (maybe weak in comparison to Jin, Heihachi, Steve, Nina, and Paul).


The biggest nerfs as far as I am aware:

Sean: Street Fighter III: Second Impact -> Street Fighter III: Third Strike

Lei-Fei: Virtua Fighter 5 -> Virtua Fighter 5: Final Shodown

Ukyo: Samurai Shodown II -> Samurai Shodown III

*All of the aforementioned went from best of the top tier to the lowest of the bottom tier.

Jin was low mid, mid at best in T5.

That’s a hell of a long fall from JFLS: The Game.

It’s kind of like SFA2 Guy.

Sure, he’s solid - but he isn’t ToD Redizzy off of literally anything, anymore.

When you go from your own tier, to mid, that’s a long, long fall.

Maxi went from tops tier to bottom, easily.

MVC3 Sentinel was straight up turned into a $2 sex-bot/trash can, comparatively.

Wolvie’s nerf from Marvel 1 to 2 was pretty freakin’ horrific as well.

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ST Dee Jay -> SF4 Dee Jay

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Even the just frame laser scraper had match-up weaknesses against Christie/Eddy, Lei, and Kuma. It was overpowered, but saying that the entire game boiled down to it is a gross oversimplification. He was very good in 5.0 regardless with good punishes and more consistent damage output across his moveset. He was just outclassed by a number of broken characters, but could do well against all others. His complete toolset did not get hit enough across the board to make him go from best to worst.

True that.

Wasn’t SF2 Dictator taken from famously broken in CE, to clear-cut worst character in HF?

That might not be as big as it souds considering even bad characters in SF2 usually were playable, but it’s clear he was hit pretty hard

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Still haven’t seen anything that surpasses 3S Sean. He went from one of the best characters in Second Impact to a walking 2-8 or 3-7 match up. Capcom has admitted to purposely making him terrible. The only reason to pick him was to embarrass your opponent by winning.

CE Bison into HF
Sub Zero MK3 into UMK3

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SFV Season 1 Chun-Li, Ryu, and Nash to Season 2 of those three characters. All Season 1 top tiers that got put in wheelchairs for Season 2. And in Season 3 only Chun-Li has somewhat recovered.

The worst nerf in SF5, is to the term “game”.

Possibly the worst nerf of all time.

Trump would be in contention, but, y’know - Dubyah.

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SamSho2 Ukyo went from being a WTF broken character in 2 to being reasonable in 3. He’s good in just about every game (although I think 6 might be an exception.) Still, I’m glad to not have to deal with this kind of bullshittery in other games, so that was a Nerf I was happy with even though I mained him in SS1.

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I also think TTT2 -> T7 Lars is worth mentioning; he did go from top 3 in the first to bottom 3 in the latter. However, he’s still quite playable, as with every T7-character. He’s outclassed rather than obsolete, so even though his relative placing as a character is drastically lowered, he’s nowhere near the other characters mentioned here.

Ukyo’s default Slash version in Samurai Shodown III is trash tier, even if his Bust version is closer to the middle. It is one of the many reasons that Samurai Shodown III is garbage in comparison to the rest of the SNK entries.

P.S. The only thing that Tekken 7 did right was showing that no one played Bob for the character or the play style.

Melee to Brawl.

Since the OP asked for specific characters, Melee Jigglypuff to Brawl Jiggs was a pretty big drop

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If we’re going that way, Sheik.

3S Chun to SFIV Chun - while nowhere near as bad as 2I Sean to 3S Sean, it’s still a testament to how good 3S Chun was.

SFIV Gen to SSFIV/AE/USFIV Gen - SFIV Gen is one of those weird cases where people didn’t know how good he was during the time the game was being played competitively. In hindsight however, all the nerfs Capcom did to him were actually necessary - had they not happened (or had we stuck to vanilla SFIV), he’d end up running the game.

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Ryo kof98 butchered in kof99. Since then He was never the same.

Yashiro, Yamazaki, Terry, Mary kof97 - kof98.
Chris, Daimon, Iori kof98 all suffered nerfs but nerfs done well in kof2002. Mature, Ralf, Clark, and Mary, however, got nerfed for no reason.

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