This is generally how I use ex rainbow now. Mix it up with backdash so that the backdash os whiffs vs. ex rainbow. It’s all kind of silly. I just don’t feel it is “solid” you know?
In 2012 ball combos will still not be as good as elec combos because of the positioning afterwards. Making upballs knockdown would have been a far better idea.
Word.
I’m worried that a medium range punish from cr jab into ball may knockdown some but not others. I wish they would make it the first 3 frames not 2. As many buffs as other characters are getting, I definitely agree he should get knockdown on vertical rolls. I really hope they give him a good juggle extender like Dee Jay. He needs something to up his damage output, which is his biggest weakness.
Yeah that will certainly be an issue.
Blanka’s damage would be fine where it is if his other faults were fixed. Upping his stun/damage up would help him though because it would make his risk:reward against a lot of the cast much better.
one thing that bothers me about blanka is he has some of the best normals in the game except he has nothing fast that chains… while it’s nice to have an excellent c.HK c.MP s.MP s.HP s.HK… very close range i have nothing that is fast that can chain… wtf!? I don’t care about ball stuff, but better frames on my long range normals including FA lvl 2 would be nice. Or just give me a faster c.LK that i can chain/cancel.
i felt blanka had excellent normals in vanilla, but after that other characters normals improved and his were merely decent in that context.
make his ex upball knockdown would in capcom’s world… make blanka too strong…
i honestly think capcom secretly likes the fact that blanka gets punished on hit
-LAU
Yeah I heard there was some debate about where I put Blanka, came to check it out. I stand by placing him among the bottom two. Gouken has some issues, but I can’t really see why you’d put him in bottom tier. He has good footsie normals, they just don’t lead to much damage, but he CAN dish out gigantic damage when he gets close. His wakeup is bad, but there are worse. I feel like he’s decent at mid range, decent up close, and decent on defense. Nothing fantastic, just a regular ol’ low mid tier character. And while I also think that Rose is weak, it has to be pointed out that Sabin won a major tournament splitting time between Dhalsim and Rose. I wanted to put Rose lower than I did in that tier list but felt I couldn’t because of that one tournament.
Here’s the thing about ex rainbow. More controllable? Sure, that’s nice. But as a wakeup it’s fully option selectable, as you know. If it didn’t got option selected, that might be because you didn’t do it as a reversal, and if ex rainbow is not a reversal, then it straight up sucks for being too focusable. Anyway if it gets into the air, you have to decide whether to hit or make it whiff. If you try to make it hit and it does, oooo, you deal like 120 damage. If it gets blocked, you’re taking way more damage than you would have dealt if it had hit, since even throws do more, not to mention the real punishes good players will use. If you try to make it whiff, you can be punished because it doesn’t go as far as it used to so it’s not really like you can get out of the corner very easily with it now. And you all know how punishable ex up ball is against a lot of the cast. Blanka’s wakeup and escape game is ass, imo. Fine, backdash on wakeup, you’re just getting closer to the corner that you’re so bad at getting out of heh.
I like his normals, obviously. They have good hitboxes on the ground, in the air, and as antiairs and they’re reasonably fast and safe (although Dan punishes a cr hp that’s not max range with ultra, I’m sure plenty of other characters do too). But when you’re a charge character who needs to dance back and forth at mid range playing footsies, you don’t have access to specials you might like to combo into. So Blanka has Gouken syndrome, don’t you think? His normals have nice hitboxes and take up good spots on screen, but they don’t lead to damage unless he’s up close.
Up close, Blanka’s mixups are ass. We’re talking like a max of 150, 200 damage if a mixup works out, and like Veserius said the hop nerf makes landing mixups even harder. He has a nice cross up, but without a good throw range or a big threat from a counterhit game, I don’t think that’s as useful as it could be. And good luck getting in against a bunch of the cast. I was playing Veserius the other day as Zangief vs his Blanka, and at some point I got a life lead, walked backward into the corner, and just hung out. What’s he gonna do? He knew he didn’t have any good options, it’s not like he can roll me to death anymore because he has to be pretty close to make jab roll safe and the others get punished. Eventually he tried hop into something, but I reacted with st mp and that was the round.
Imo Blanka has bad offense, bad mixups, bad defense, and a decent mid range game. Nobody in AE is actually bad, it’s a well balanced game even considering Fei/Yun, but Blanka has a rougher time than most anyone imo. In fact the main reason he’s even as relevant as he is is due more to problems with the characters he beats than that his stuff is good. Does he beat Hawk? Sure. But if Hawk had a quick pursuit move that could punish ball or up ball that match would be even. Hawk doesn’t really need that against most characters, it’s just a quirk of the game that the lack of it hurts him against Blanka.
Anyway. I thought Blanka was bottom 5 in Super and they nerfed him. Yay!
Yeah if you see for a lot of what I do, and a lot of what Blanka players do is they fish for sweep because it leads to a mixup at least. Ch low forward to sweep or even just fishing for it as a frame trap on a hit cr.mk is worth it a lot of the time. Honda’s ability to get low jab to hands+followup is amazing and I really wish Blanka had something somewhat equal to that to compensate, but he doesn’t. I think comparing Blanka to Gouken is a little unfair. I think Blanka is much more capable of making you block incorrectly, and that his mixup game is much much better. The “mixup” that I get hit by with gouken players is late teching too late, and eating backthrow to ultra. It’s not reliable.
Hop nerf was absolutely stupid. Anyways, Blanka’s best mixups involve “hard to blockables” and ambiguous jump fierce, which can lead to 250+ damage depending on the character and the positioning, the problem is you need to land a hard knockdown first, and they are character dependent, you can get something solid on over half the cast though. He has a lot of subtle stuff too, but it’s character specific. It’s really really hard for Blanka to mixup grapplers that aren’t hakan with no oil/u2. Blanka’s kara throw is really really good and underutilized, but it loses value against certain characters, notably grapplers because you don’t want to be fighting in that range. When I attempted to kara throw your gief or hakan, I was met with an SPD, and the risk:reward for Blanka vs. those characters is not good in general in that range. In that match, I was screwed for sure, but I had also put myself in a bad positiion, in pretty much any other game I would have been dead already after eating like 3-4 command throws. I lost the round based off of bad decisions earlier in the round. A lot of characters can downback with 25 seconds left vs. a lot of characters and a 60% life lead where the other player can’t be chipped. Random ex hand chip was gg, not a lot any character who doesn’t have a projectile can do in that situation, even ball spam in super could be caught by a twitching lariat hand.
Anways, I agree with you that AE blanka is a bad character, I think we just differ on how bad. I think for the most part we agree on how bad his tools are, especially defensively, though I think his backdash/focus backdash are underrated because even though they are slow, Blanka covers a lot of distance during the invincible part which can do well vs. a lot of common followups, backdash out of os sweeps is cool for instance. His offense really really isn’t good, but I think most Blanka players are incapable of creating offense with Blanka other than hop mixups. However if you thought super blanka was bottom 5, that is insanely confusing, and pretty much ignoring matchups completely.
Anyways Blanka sucks, but American Blanka players are not good, don’t innovate, and I think part of that plays into people’s opinion of the character. Blanka has a great kara throw, but people don’t use it, you just cited his bad throw range, but the kara throw actually does quite well in a lot of situations. Blanka has the ability to get a stun vs. 8 or 9 characters off of one correct guess if he lands a throw, but players still aren’t using those setups. I guarantee you if a player with better execution than me was using the things that I know about this character he’d be doing a lot better, See: Korea/Japan.
Nah, it has more to do with how much I believe in Super’s balance. Super’s bottom tier was better than AE’s and its top tier wasn’t as good. Being bottom 5 in Super was no big thing, I felt Blanka could do well in tournaments as long as he got good matchup draws. It’s just that when going through all the characters in that game, I want to rank 30 something characters ahead of him.
Anyway again, I don’t think Blanka is bad in AE, bottom tier in AE is still better than bottom tier in most games even if it’s not as good as in Super. I just don’t believe Blanka will ever do anything of note in major tournaments.
Ex Rainbow as mentioned above (which i don’t blame you for not reading it) gives more options not just on wake up… and reversal can also be activated post block as well… why ex rainbow was pointed out? well in AE apparently it’s possible (and not difficult) to make it into an unblockable so there’s not much guessing going on… it’s either i get hit out of it or i knock you down… There’s not much Blanka players using it yet simply because 1) there’s not that many good blanka players 2) I feel like lots of Blanka players don’t know how to consistently make it into an unblockable yet (it takes practice but its really not hard once you get the hang of it)
so when you pair that up with his other defensive options it just makes things a tad easier than prior to AE…
Like i said above again… yes… ex rainbow on wake up can be snuffed out by OS… not anything new…but there’s plenty of characters who on wakeup sucks ass if not more.
you mentioned you beat Ves by sitting back after a life lead… good for you… i don’t know how much life lead you got or how much time he’s got left, how much meters he’s got, and if he’s got revenge or not… nor do i know how much life you and ex bar you got as well… finally last but not least… both of your skill level vs how often you guys play against each other (like know each other player wise/habits)… all this stuff matters… just because you beat Ves in that scenario doesn’t mean you beat Blanka…
you give me full meters… a significant life lead 10 seconds left on the clock without the wall behind my back… i’m pretty confident i’ll beat you pretty much everytime…if i’m blanka and you’re gief… it’s really not saying much… a little less exaggerated example… if i was given some meters significant life lead… it’s not hard for Blanka to play defense against gief as well… you can’t really do much either without taking a huge risk one way or another… ves hopped into you and you interrupted him good job… don’t know if you hit him during his hop or during his landing… but it makes a bit of difference… if you interrupted him during his hop that means you reacted much faster which means he probably haven’t given you enough pressure yet… if you interrupted him after he landed… it means it was possible for him to U1 you…
I do think Blanka should be walking back and forward and take advantage of his excellent normals… he doesn’t really need to use his charge moves as much as you think… his best special imo… is electricity and doesn’t require a charge… he doesn’t need upball to AA… obviously if the guy is jumping at you when you’re obviously charged up… he basically just gave up the game on you or if you’re gief he’s trying to bait you into U2… everything else that people throw at him in the air can usually be knocked out clean by Blanka with his vast options against air…
on the ground… thanks to once again good normals… it’s not that hard to play footsie with him… and seriously… i don’t know about other Blankas but i don’t exactly use c.HP all the time to the point where people are expecting it like that… not to mention you can FADC it… and it is not a bad option once inawhile. Your main footsie tool should be s.MP, s.LP, c.MP, c.HK, s.HP and if you wanna whiff punish ok… c.HP is good for that if the others aren’t exactly reaching… .but once again… finally… if your character can get punished for doing something like c.HP against another character and that player is capable of doing that… well then you shouldn’t be using it that much in the first place… and honestly… c.HP recovery sucks ass… if someone can predict c.HP coming… it means 1) you’re using it wayy too much 2) they can jump in and land a full combo on you anyways… basically what i’m saying is… c.HP isn’t an example you should be throwing out for a Blanka user…
now… if you tell me people can punish s.MP on block with an ultra… i’ll agree with you and say Blanka totally sucks in his footsie department… fortunately… s.MP unlike c.HP is +1 on block
Blanka isn’t only about mixups… LP -> electricity is one of Blanka’s key pressure tool… unfortunately i haven’t really seen too many videos of players in the states using it… you can EASILY get LP -> electricity -> LP -> electricity as a true block string… what this means is… it’s possible… to
far s.LP i think is probably one of the longest normals that’s 3 frames… but i might be wrong on this… but it certainly feels that way…
Finally… I just wanna say… Blanka is an unpopular to start of with… and on top of that… US aren’t exactly known to have strong Blanka players… however in other parts of the world… Blanka have been winning some tournaments… most recently Taku won his qualifiers… If i remember correctly… one of the top 10 arcade BP in Japan is held by a Blanka player…
You’re definitely entitled to believe Blanka is bottom of the bottom tier… it doesn’t make you right or wrong… just like how some of us feels differently (most of us think blanka is around mid tier)… that also doesn’t make us necessarily right either… however if based on just tournament standings there’s a few other characters that’s should be joining Blanka if not in worst positions…
I just think maybe… just maybe us Blanka community might know a bit more about Blanka than you do… that’s all.
-LAU
Hell he isn’t even bottom of the charge characters. I’d say Dee Jay is worse and Vega slightly worse. Guile is even or worse. But that’s like, just my opinion man.
Crouch HP is not really a good example, this normal sucks.
Oh for sure, of course character specialists are going to know all the ins and outs of their character better than other people. I figure I probably know more about more characters and how they interact than most people do, but I don’t know everything about every character, that would be nuts. Let me know if you think any of the factual things I say are wrong.
Gouken disease just means that you can’t deal significant damage from the mid range, not talking about the close range stuff. At mid range Blanka can’t really do anything but individual normals, just like Gouken. And yeah, some of Blanka’s normals are better in placement and hitbox, although I definitely like Gouken’s sweep more. But the point that neither one can really deal important damage there remains. The difference between their mixups imo is like, Blanka is a little more likely to hit his and Gouken does a lot more damage when he hits, but neither one is great at mixing up.
pretty much everything you mentioned that is ‘factual’ is true… like i said can’t disagree with you there…
however it’s just the examples you used to say why Blanka sucks aren’t exactly the best examples to use to demonstrate why Blanka sucks…
you mentioned everything on wake up yes Blanka isn’t that good but it doesn’t mean every single character out there can punish ex upball on hit… and it’s really given scenario as well… (maybe need meters, ultra, super etc)… you make it sound like every character can punish every single option Blanka throw at them… it’s true for SOME fortunate characters but not really apply to all…
good normals… but shouldn’t be used because Blanka needs to charge for his specials? like i said above… this is a bad example… it’s more like why are you always backing up and charging when your normals are so freaking good? c. HP punish by Dan… is probably true never tried it out… but it’s like me telling you Gief’s best normal is df+HK because it’s got the furthest range… -_-; c.HP got it’s use but it’s a bad example to throw out…
everything else you mentioned are mainly opinions… and i have responded my thoughts to them on the post above.
-LAU
I think gouken is better than blanka but he is harder to play. You can’t scoff and safe dive kicks a shrinking hitbox cr.lk to avoid tiger knees bushin flips etc , fireballs to prevent people lke honda sitting on db and a really mean counter hit game. Blanka is better mid range, his normals coupled with his movement allow you to stall rush down from your opponent better and it’s easier to footsie slightly. High level players struggle more vs goukens offence than blankas because it’s actually safe, he has better option selects and you eat half life for crouch teching wrongly.
The thing is I don’t think there are any high level goukens or blankas in anywhere but Japan/Korea, and Blanka consistently places higher, has more BP, has a better winrate, and people still aren’t blocking ambiguous jump fierce or “hard to blockable” j.hp/mk/hk. Also I think high level non-gimmick Blanka offense is very very safe vs. a large amount of the cast, but isn’t as safe as in super because of the loss of balls.
I will say for sure that you get more out of Gouken for crushing crouch techs, and non-charge characters tend to have better option selects simply because the motion isn’t restricting you(in the situations where blanka can os ex upball/ex u2/u1 his option select potential is actually quite good). I just don’t see Gouken winning at all anywhere.
fwiw i dont think gouken is much better, just a touch, he’s still weak compared to good characters.
Except for the kara throw set up, the close MK can have other uses?
cl.mk is good as a meaty vs. gouken cause it beats counter, it’s also useful as a cr.tech beater because of the hitbox it can get above cr.shorts really easy.
I don’t personally use it enough, but it has uses.