I imagine Chun will at least be mid tier. Fwiw I personally put her at low but not bottom in season 2 (Ken, Juri, Fang, Kolin, Nash, Alex, and Ryu in that order are the characters I consider to be worse than Chun).
All of the universal changes work in Chun’s favor. She will have some of the best post-throw oki in season 3 and many brainless VTs are getting nerfed; she has always kind of played against the concept of VTs, but seems to be getting two good-to-excellent ones going into s3 anyways. Her individual buffs are moderate at best but they will count. Air legs is still not a great anti-throw option, but it is serviceable – I don’t like using it but Filipinoman made the point that unlike other throw baits it dodges or beats defensive buttons – but the really big part of the buff IMO is that it is now much more rewarding if you use it in neutral to hop over a fireball or very horizontal poke such as Juri’s st.hk. CC f+hk is pretty good, not a world beater as it is not exactly a move you can fish with but I wouldn’t downplay it. I personally get a decent amount of ranged ch’s with it as it is. (Edit: it’s actually not really improved as a meaty because if someone does a quickrise wakeup button into your meaty f+hk, you already get a full cr.lp combo on them. So I’d look at the change in terms of neutral only, not pressure.)
The b+hk change is interesting. I’ll need to see it in action to properly assess it, but given that it is an aa that gives you a fantastic left/right mixup even on trade it has huge potential. If it’s a functional anti air that can beat crossups and divekicks, and VT1 gets a 15+ second timer (admittedly two pretty big ifs), then Chun pretty much has all of the tools she needs to be high+ tier. [Disclaimer: Yes, obviously dependent on how different the final changelog is, this is speculation based on what we have.]
Also small thing but @Dime far range ch f+hk generally links into cr.mk. it’s still a very good buff though to be sure. Also elaborate on b+hp cc - does it build more vmeter than st.hk?
@NagaSiren Thanks, appreciate Master rank Chun Li input here!
Regarding being able to link c.mk after far distance f.hk, no, didn’t have an idea and the thought never crossed my mind to even try that. I don’t think they are going to change b.hk properties to angle the kick a bit more forwards, but the little information available from the notes seems to hint that it has at least been modified at least to stop cross-ups. If the b.hk ends up stopping normal jump-ins, then Chun would indeed be high tier. But what would be the purpose of s.lk then?
There’s a couple of curious things more I’d like to ask if somebody happened to know about this:
Apparently it’s possible to link j.hk, b.hp xx h.kikoken to c.lk in corner (no v-trigger). I’m not able to re-produce that, is that some kind of micro walk or delay 1 frame thingie after h.kikoken?
It’s possible to link c.mk xx h.kikoken, c.mk in corner in v-trigger. I can’t get the latter c.mk to hit, possibly because I end up too close. Easy to adjust and I’m going to try that today. My question is, could somebody explain why does the distance matter more in c.mk links while in v-trigger (c.mk xx h.sbk particularly)? I don’t have similar issues with the distance linking c.mk xx m.sbk without v-trigger?
Thanks! The thought never occurred to try l.kikoken because I thought the recovery time of the kikokens change depends on the strength, and that the fastest would give me most time to link. You learn something new every day.
This led me to dwell a little bit on the frame data and yes, apparently, it’s not the recovery that’s changing, but the start up. Heavy punch kikoken has the fastest start up, but it’s not necessarily the best one to use in this combo. I have always used the heavy kikoken in other jump-in combos due to this reason.
VT1 has been increased to 14 seconds. I timed it several times. In season 1 it was 17 seconds. So you may have time for 1 more mix up/pressure sequence in season 3.
Season 2’s actual v-trigger properties (the stuff other than the timer) were mostly improved over season 1 IIRC (I think some slight damage nerfs to some specials), so this is a happy medium. The additional scaling on VTC combos I assume will still work out to be roughly the same as most season 2 VTC combos if her SBK damage got buffed back in VT mode as well.
From what I’m seeing she’ll be in a pretty decent spot for Season 3. Still not going to be top tier since with the way is going you pretty much need a command grab or corner pushing setplay to be top tier and she still won’t have either of those. At best she will just be better at doing what she does, which is good enough to be viable. It’s not like you need to be top tier to win Evo or CPT with the balance of the game any way. Just more players will flock to top tiers and they will be more consistent in major events.
Still gonna stick with Ibuki as main since she’s my fav character. Plus, still going to be top 10 or could go all the way up to top 5 again. The meta pretty much shifted completely in her favor now that they’re taking away throw loops while pretty much retaining her ability to pressure and reset you off everything. Plus the nerfs to her target combo and ex kunai hit stun pushback are actually indirect buffs. Basically all that’s going to do is push you to the corner easier where the 50/50 reset is much easier to do and works on big characters. Even the old mid screen reset couldn’t be done on big guys any way.
Basically when it all pans out they made her buttons better, didn’t nerf any of the ones I thought they were going to nerf and pretty much all of the nerfs are negligible or indirect buffs any way.
Tested some things in the corner.
V-skill hp, s.mp > activation, c.mk xx l.kikoken, c.mk xx m.sbk works, but is not worth the activation imo (314 dmg)
In VT, at closest range, c.mk, c.lp, c.mk xx m.kikoken, c.mk xx m.sbk works too, for 290 dmg. I wonder if f.hk CC in season 3 could lead into it.
I think the distance is more strict for c.mk xx h.sbk in VT basically because of the longer startup of h.sbk.
At far/max range and/or late link, it won’t combo as Capcom allowed the combo only in VT and in short combos to limit the damage (the ridiculous damage scaling wasn’t enough obviously…). So if you’re not too far, go for c.mk xx h.sbk. H.sbk will connect better on crouching opponents too, as their hurtbox extends while crouching.
(Posted from discord):
Just FYI, the VT1 scaling when you cancel into it hurts quite a bit (as I’m sure it does the rest of the cast)
You’ll be losing out on about 40-60 damage and stun on bigger damaging combos and about 10-30 damage and stun on the shorter combos.
Example: st. HP xx VTC, st. HP xx Super is now 342 damage and 255 stun (down from 400 damage and 270 stun).
I’m comparing the damage and stun for a bunch of combos I wrote down at the end of S2 and it’s like this for pretty much all the V-trigger confirms.
(That’s also taking into account that she got damage buffs on her commonly used moves lol)
b.hk : small hurtbox on the top removed. I thought they would have extended the hitbox backwards too, but obviously, removing the small hurtbox was enough.