Chun Li General Thread: Blue Jade

I just read the balance patch notes, and I have to say I’m utterly disappointed. Or more accurately, it is not any more disappointment, it’s more like I’ve lost all interest in the game.

The two characters I liked most, Chun Li and Juri, pretty much remain as they are - well, Juri now has a functional AA, but Chun Li is the same as far as I could see from the notes. The top characters remain as they are until the end of Season 2. I simply find this unacceptable in the e-sport category.

Also, did I read correctly that Capcom is offering like 50K of Fight Money just for starting the game after 30th of May? It is kind of surprising change given how tightwadded they were with respect to online FM during Season 1 and start of Season 2. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling they are now bribing people to stay with the game as Tekken 7 and Injustice 2 are around.

That being said, I’m now officially done with the game and will uninstall it today. So I suppose this will be a sort of farewell message to the Chun Li community at Shoryuken, I hope you’ll have a good time playing the game, and perhaps she’ll be improved over time in Season 3. I respect the this Chun Li community who always seem on point and retained mutual respect to other character mains, a trait rather rare in the internet.

Thanks guys for the ride I was in here! I’ll linger around for some days, and unregister from Shoryuken at some point in June.

Why leave? Just come back when you’re interested in the game again. But if you gotta go though, take care!

Hi JoeyTones, it’s a combination of several factors, and I simply don’t believe any of them will get better in any time soon. A lot of them have been discussed already in several forums so feel free to skip this wall-o-text.

The first and foremost is what I see as selection bias applied by Capcom in an e-sport competitive level play. At this point I think Capcom has an agenda to sell their DLC, specifically to Westerners. It is very profitable, check euro to yen or dollar to yen conversion ratio. Without the advertised e-sports aspect which should guarantee a fair game for all characters, I don’t think I would have become interested in the game.

That they tried to somewhat streamline and simplify the game from earlier installments is an amendable goal, and very much a requirement for e-sports. I think changing mains in SFV is probably easiest it has ever been in Street Fighters, so instead of mastering a single character, it’s now possible to master several and I think that’s good. But somewhere along the lines it also went quite wrong.

The second thing is the game (reward) mechanics. For me it seems to reward wrong things. There’s a fair bit of guessing game, but if I wanted to play e-sports with probabilities and risk management, Blood Bowl is designed around six sided dice probabilities and does that better and more enjoyably, still managing to give an impression that what player does matters more.

The other player controlling the game and then losing to a massive come back from a single crush-counter combo does not make a very enjoyable gaming experience (either watching or playing) to me. I get that some characters are designed to inflict massive damage quickly and have compensating factors for that, and some characters are designed to inflict damage over a longer period of time. That’s OK. It’s the risk-reward ratio between these characters that’s off.

The third thing is the input lag. It is indeed better than it was in S1, but there are still special moves that cover a large distance that are plain unreactable with their start-up time and the present input lag. Improving the input lag further would improve the neutral game and I think also anti-airing.

The fourth thing is related to what Dime is saying above with reactable stuff. It’s not only related to Chun Li, but I think observational physiology is not actually well thought out in the character design. Some moves by some characters are very easy to see like Chun’s overhead, yet some overheads are harder to react to, which tend to be vertical hand movements. Moves of the same class like overheads tend to have about similar frame data since it’s easy to argue that it’s only fair.

But it’s actually a problem if the extent of the movement changes between characters. The human vision system reacts faster to a larger movement, and especially lateral movements. It would be interesting to see the frame data taking into account the observational physiology, but that’s not gonna happen.

In other times, the game is very misleading on the animations making it unintuitive to see if something is punishable or not, forcing the player to read the frame data or do hit box studies earlier than they are actually ready to commit hours for something like that. I know it can’t always be perfect, but averagely it seems a bit too much off. Sometimes it’s hard to say if something can even be hit or not even in the neutral game; Chun’s cr.MK being my biggest grief as her feet can clearly go behind the opponent’s ankle, but no hit is registered even then. Ryu’s st.LK is another similar annoyance, but apparently it was restored.

Worse, the distance is also inconsistent, due to animations and hurt boxes differing substantially between characters. This requires me to study the opponent’s hurt boxes for simple things when the visual cue of my character’s limb length really should be good enough for the majority of normal button attacks.

The Fifth thing is that the game is actually quite bad at teaching you its core mechanics and basic fighting game concepts such as zoning, getting around zoning, anti-mashing, shimmies, staggers and mix ups. I’ve met Silver level players who didn’t understand their main crush counters and then complained about my rookie Season 2 Chun overwhelming them in neutral. I also don’t get why the trials do not include actual commonly used combos (BnBs, punishes, etc) now that the game has been played for a year. This would be a better introduction to character IMO.

Sixth is the FM policy of Capcom. The way it is distributed is simply odd and counter-intuitive. I played the game to unlock all characters up to Ed to get some kind of an idea of them all. But the weekly 5000 FM per a story mission is a totally different world compared to the 50 FM awarded per online win. It’s apparent that Injustice 2 and Tekken 7 that have scared Capcom of the player base actually remaining in the game, thus the FM is now coming in droves. It’s just that it appears as bribing to me.

Fun fact: apparently removing the account from Capcom Unity removes also all the posts made under that account :slight_smile:

@Darklightjg1 Nice Chun, good to see you trying to make her work in this trash game. Saw you on stream against Vagabond’s Necalli.

Other buffs that chun could use to make her better imo:

Fhk right now has terrible risk/reward outside of v trigger. So fhk could use some adjustments, any of the following would do:

Make it +0 on block
Make it give knockdown CC on CH. (would nerf its combo aspect but make it it a much better chuck it out there move)
Make it +6 on CH so that it confirms into cr.mk xx special from max range (chun doesn’t get anything off of it at max range currently, even on CH)
Give it one more frame of actives (this would be amazing for chuns post ex legs/ sbk oki cause right now it misses against backrise if you do it frame perfect after a forward dash (can still manually time it to cover both dashes, and it’s pretty easy to do since you have a 3 frame leeway against quick tech into 3 frame move, or 4 frame leeaway if the opponent doesn’t have a 3 frame move) but making it autopilot timing to cover both rises would give chun this sequence which is easy to pull off:

Ex legs>dash>fhk (opponent stays on ground) immediate fhk (corpse hop) immediate st.mp (hits 3 frame jabs, crosses up)

Other buffs she could use are to make her st.hp cause a knockdown CC (probably waaaaaay to powerful, but whatever)

Make her MK/HK legs knockdown (she could really use this, as the move has very little use currently)

Or tone down the damage on mk and hk legs slightly and make them super cancelable on the last hit instead of the second hit (pumps up her damage a bit and gives her an easier empty buffer cr.mk xx legs xx super confirm)

Make her v reversal knockdown on hit (give this move an actual use, it kinda sucks right now)

Making her cr.mk +0 on block would be nice as well since she could then autopilot her cr.lp,cr.mk CH confirm with less downside on block.

Some other things that’s might be useful to us chun players:

Defensive cr.lp,bmp xx v trigger (this is confirmable and will combo from max range CH cr.lp,bmp xx v trigger cr.hp>stuff. So that’s a better defensive confirm for Chun when she has v trigger, than cr.lp,cr.mk since the fmp is +0 on block.

This is a good blockstring in general once chun has v trigger, since it gives chun a max range confirm from jab, even when on offense.

And this next one will be controversial, but it’s safe and can probably be used to decent effect if you have good guessing skills: fmp regular hit confirm into ex legs. The problem is that the CH confirm seems a bit hard like either the CH message doesn’t show up fast enough or whatever… but if you simply confirm HIT instead, it’s not a hard confirm… you just have to guess whether the hit is going to be a ch or not… so in other words, is situations where you would expect it to CH… which would be in your pokestrings… or your opponents… just autopilot the confirm.

This of course will be controversial, but if we combine it with a v trigger cancel on block (we have enough time to see that it didn’t CH once the ex legs are blocked) we can make it even more safe if we want to… so it’s another v trigger “os” of sorts…

Might be decent if someone can really step up their CH guesses.

Do you know what stream channel that was on? I need to review and correct the bad decisions I made in the match.

Ok so after testing, the cr.lp,fmp ch confirm into v trigger is fucking awesome. Super viable and gives chun a confirm from ranges she normally doesn’t. So she becomes much scarier when doing stagger pressure with this string when she has v trigger.

@Darklightjg1

https://youtu.be/Jz2p6a_0PN8?t=1h17m15s

1:17:15 if the timestamp doesnt work

OH MY GOD!!!

Just found out the most brilliant thing about Chun. This may actually make her go up in the tiers guys if some of the good chuns get this down and can do it. So I went into training mode on some git gud shit. Was planning on putting in like 100 hours of practice to basically get nowhere, but I have to do something to make Chun better… so anyways, y’all know I’m practicing the CH confirms nowadays…an I’ve been getting them well… so time to move onto the big bad fmp> ex legs confirm.

I started out by practicing the link with random hit set to on. Took me a few tries to get the timing…
About 10 minutes or so to where I was really familiar enough with it to remember with different settings.

So basically I was doing the link by doing fmp… slow qcf roll into ex legs… using the buffer time.

So I started out in trying the hitconfirm the same way… but couldn’t do it at all.

That is FMP slow roll qcf… then try to hit the KK buttons on reaction to CH.

Couldn’t fucking do it, at all.

Then…
A bright light. I decided to instead just do fmp… nothing. And only input qcf + KK on confirm.

And of course since I’m doing it that way… I decided to do a LIGHTNING FAST qcf + KK on reaction.

It’s TOTALLy fucking doable this way. Just fmp…
React to CH then do QCF + KK as fast as possible.

It’s actually pretty easy.

This gives chun a knockdown confirm at neutral from further away than basically anyone else in the cast. This is ULTRA powerful and makes her into a mini 3s Chun.

The combo does 198 damage so it’s good damage. And it knocks down and sets up chuns offense bla bla bla you get the drill.

With the insane range that this has… well the skies the limit on what we can do with it.

Hasn’t Nuki already been doing this since Season 1? It’s a typical confirm that any 3rd Strike player would have down in minutes any way.

I’ve seen chuns attempt it. Watched some nuki matches, he’s attempted it once, got it blocked.

No it’s not something you see, I’m not saying I’ve “found” it… lol it’s been known since day 1 I’m saying actually trying to abuse it… is what’s not seen as of right now… and there’s no reason not to if you have the confirm down.

I did see TKR use it to confirm into super though in that last 256 man tournie… but personally unless it kills I think it’s a waste to do it into super. It only does 386 with super, but it does 198 for ex legs. You are basically using 2 extra meters to do less than 200 extra damage.

But if you hit this confirm twice in one round you’ve done 396 for 2 meters and have had 2 separate knockdowns to get more damage from.

Yeah, I abuse this. My game play revolves around using most of my meter on ex leg confirms, fishing for b+mp into legs, late fire ball hits into legs, AA fireball into legs, up close I stagger jabs and st. Mp. CH mp into cr.fp legs, cr. Lk ex legs pretty easy to confirm and you don’t need a charge. Does almost 280? If a walk jab/frame trap sequence hits, cr mk into ex legs.

I play chun like I played cammy in sf4. Footsie/Frame trap heavy into knock down + pressure string then back to a safe footsie range where my walk speed ranges on my normals are stronger .

Which for me is b+mp range cause at this range I have options I like.

  • Fish for b+mp CH ~ ex legs
  • Dash frame trap st.mp , CH cr.hp Lk legs, cr.Lk ~ ex legs
  • Dash throw
  • Air legs
  • Fireballs
  • F+hk
  • Walk forward
  • Ex legs to whiff punish

To name a few options, even AA has good options here.

  • Neutral jump mp ~ ex legs
  • Neutral jump fp/hk
  • S.Lk
  • B+hk
  • Dash /walk under
  • Ex SBK

It’s been years since I talked to you, you remember me? How’s it been?

Haha! Hi dime! I remember! I’m super good! Yourself?

Why can’t all the character be as honorable as Chun is…sigh

Whenever someone mentions honor in fighting games, I’m reminded of this from GoT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZSFpeLEAok#t=110s

Basically, you should know what you’re getting into when you decide to play a “fair character” and it definitely isn’t exclusive to SF. The cheaper characters show up the most because that’s what works the most even against highly trained players. In the patching era, I think the best you could hope for (if you’re a character loyalist and won’t easily switch to the next cheap flavor of the month/year) is for your character to be just cheap enough to pull out high level wins regularly, but not so cheap that they’ll be complained about so much that they become an obvious target for nerfs whenever a balance patch happens (if Ryu and Chun are an indicator of how far they’ll go with the nerfs without understanding how it affect their competitive viability).

Yup

Hope the ninja stays under the radar until Season 3.

Chun getting boomed to death even harder than she did in Season 1 in a game where everyone else can at least do something relevant to them.

Pretty much this.

There seems to be other e-sport games with balance issues such as StarCraft 2, which has lost a significant fraction of its player base. A fraction this has been attributed to developers not caring much about the actual balance of the game, or about the pro player comments or their suggestions. I don’t play RTS, but that’s what I came across. Blizzard has about the same balance patch cycle as Capcom, leading to substantial player losses when balance patches break the meta for one of the three factions with issues remaining unacknowledged. And then finally when changes are made, they skirt along the issue and fix something unrelated. So the comments from the pros are eerily similar to what’s been said about SFV.

One really annoying thing is the communication from Capcom that often seems to contradict itself with what actually is done. So some of them know something’s wrong, but the fix gets stuck in the executive level with no changes in the end. I got caught by this on March and kept going, but no more. There’s no point on execution heavy character with no pay off in a competitive game.

For me the worst part of Chun is the way it’s been handled between S1 and S2 by Capcom, and how the community behaves with respect to the character. Coming fresh to SFV, I had no idea and no way of knowing of Chun Li being as hated as she is. And a lot of that appears to be originating all the way from Third Strike, whose tier list should have no relevance to today’s SF.

Because of the above, I believe that if Chun at some point becomes viable, that just means a flux of complaints gets her nerfed again. Maining her competitively is a risk; Chun being a bit technical leaves you less time to learn other characters that could work as a back up. Patches in combat flight sims (competitive but no e-sport) or in Blood Bowl 2 (e-sport) felt like they kept the 95 % of the meta intact, and built upon it or tweaked something slightly. At no point have the patches necessitated large scale tactical or strategical changes.