Claw's 2013 wishlist

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
541

Crumple gives pretty good reward though, it’s a free dash forward st.fierce, cr.strong, EXFBA, Izuna drop.

I’m not sure how I feel about Red Focus. I kind of think it’s going to hurt poking game if someone is good at predicting someone’s actions based on their spacing and the possibilities of what you can do at certain distances. For example cr.mp pokes. Soak it up, soak up EXFBA, dash out to avoid the claw or Izuna drop, and punish to build more meter.

I’m not really sure it will be good for us. I mean, if we have 3 meters, it would be a great help to punish dive kickers who space dive kicks well and attack on recovery, so you could soak up that second hit and crumple, which is a pretty good reward since you could punish for 355 damage or Ultra. It could also be used to punish cr.forwards xx fireball or even EX fireball now if you’re close enough. The only thing I’d be worried about is instead of canceling cr.forward to tatsu to break armor.

And of course, I really worry about what creative ways people will use it to destroy me, lol.

542

can’t crumple divers, they mostly use lights after a dive, uncrumplable

543

Some dives are, such as those of the twins. It’s risky though, as one frame too late and you could eat a DP. ( ‘-’)

Yeah, but I was talking of the player trying to counterhit the focus itself, at the risk of being crumpled while trying.

544

Just gotta be careful about how you do it I guess. I mean, that’s pretty much true of playing Claw in SF4, you have to be careful of every single thing you do since 1 jab can blow you up. But say you have 3 meters and your opponent only has 1, a Red Focus wouldn’t have to worry about counter hit since you could soak any counters and if they don’t fall for it, dash back. I mean, can you even counter a Red Focus if it soaks up hits as you attack since you won’t be able to use a Focus to interrupt it mid attack?

Lights won’t matter if you Red Focus them. It will only matter if they use an instant armor breaking attack after a dive kick/jump in/whatever. Red Focus is really going to change the game a lot I think. 2nd rounds are going to be totally different meta game since most likely both players will have meter.

545

I don’t think using a 2 meter red focus at jab range is particularly a good idea. There’s no pushback on focused jabs and you end up taking that grey life, losing 2 meters and risk getting thrown out of it. On the other hand your reward is a trade focus or focus into 250ish more damage. What you lose doesn’t = what you could potentially gain so it’s not worth it.

In order for Red focus (assuming infinite absorbs, 2 meter requirement, doesn’t scale, and unblockable at level 2) Vega will need:

-Increased walk speed or dash distance
-sHK fixed to be a reliable regular focus breaker
-Increased range where close standing HP activates
-Mask/claw doesn’t come off when hit during a focus attack
-Increased range of normals
-Less recovery and faster movement speed on wall dives

Anyone that doesnt have a command throw or forward moving armor breaker that doesn’t require charge (Juri and Chun instantly come to mind) is going to be at a severe disadvantage

Also… I never chose U2 for it’s invincibility. I wont speak for anyone else though but I pick U2 because of its low hitbox which makes it good against divekicks

546

Yeah, it kinda sucks that ST is our only non-meter armor breaker, and on top of that we have to charge for it. Would be nice if CH broke armor, that would be so insane and godly though LOL. Maybe it would be more fair if PoM broke armor instead? Can’t really combo off that can we?

Those changes would all be nice, stuff I mentioned above a while back.

I choose U2 because it’s much more reliable as an AA option than U1 if they make a bad jump and haven’t attacked yet. I’ve been hit out of U1 on the way up far too many times, and U2 doesn’t have that problem. U2 also allows me to slide under fireball at the right range or even kill late fireball start up, and still slide under it. IMO I find it much more useful, and I’d still probably choose it over having both Ultra at once, especially if they make the start up faster on U2 like they’re saying.

547

Mooncilde, we were talking about US using red focus to counterhit them, not the otherway around. we were discussing how viable is it to use red focus when cornered so we can get a level 1 FA crumple on them as retaliation. FA comes out too slow to reliably crumple light attacks.

i kinda find red focus to be more of a offensive tool rather than defensive really. one way i see it being used is a semi defensive move is to use it near the end of the opponent’s block string e.g. cody. let’s say he has 2 bars. most cody’s will frame trap with cr.hp, cr.lk to criminal upper with them 2 bars, so they can cancel it and continue pressure. now normally, what i do is kara tech after his cr.hp since the frame between cr.hp and cr.lk is 4 frames. but there will be times i’ll miss it and get cr.lk in upper. or there are times when is focus tech back dash, but that cr.lk hits me on recovery and the criminal upper follows. with red focus, i can focus at that point, absorb his cr.lk and criminal upper, and get a level 2 FA. even with meter, he’s not gonna escape out of vega’s focus.

if your character has a faster dash, you don’t even need to wait for level 2, you just do level 1. chun li is +1 on block with a level 1 FA, so she can turn any pressure around with little risk. with her getting ex hazanshu being able to armour break, i feel this matchup will become more nightmarish than before…

548

We still need a good armor-breaker though.
Roll pressure is going to be so bad, since they can just absorb and punish with combo of their choice. They get so much time to do it, since Roll is so slow.

549

He was probably referring to my post… which primarily addressed Trias’s post before the majority of your using red focus conversation.

But I guess to drag us back on topic, THE ONLY saving grace Red Focus would have for us would be the unblockable level 2 focus to open up downbackers.

The problem is that Vega relies on Block so much that this will do him more harm than good.

550

So you don’t see much other use for Red Focus then?

Actually, it would be pretty nice to be able to walk back to charge ST instead of crouching down back. Would give him some extra mobility and a decent AA at the right ranges. If they changed all his down back charges to simply back I think that would help make Ultra more mobile as well.

It would also be nice if FBA’s hurt box wasn’t so huge, would make the move a bit more useful if you’re trying to slash. At any point, it’s near impossible to even trade a lot of close AA options like cr.Fierce for E.Ryu.

Actually, what I would love to have is the ability to throw your mask at no meter cost and have it break armor. That would be so fabulous, lol.

551

Chiming in from this post that caught my attention:

It’s a defensive game for this fundamental reason.

Walking beats blocking (includes throwing)
Blocking beats poking
Poking beats walking

The imbalance (although I prefer it this way until online and offline are indistinguishable) is that there is very little risk to blocking. You have to walk pretty close to get into throw range, AND the tech window is HUGE (needed for online honestly). The fact that it takes a lot of walking to beat blocking is the reason that this game is defensive. Only a few characters can combo from an overhead, and only grapplers can really get big damage in from throws. That’s one of the reasons why characters like Yun, Fei, Akuma (and yeah I still think Yang) are really good. They can beat the overly strong block option and get good damage off of it. On the other hand poking puts you at risk of a counterhit. Walking puts you at risk of a normal combo. There’s no guard gauge, and every character has a fairly weak offense when compared to previous games compounding the problem.

Play CvS2, A2/A3, or ST and you’ll see what I mean about those games being strong offensively.

No. But there’s no way they are going to remove it so we may as well balance it best we can.

Here’s my post on CU with my recommendation on how to balance it:
Here’s my thoughts:

I think Red Focus should cost 3 bars of meter to do. It should absorb infinite hits and be weak to the usual throws and armor breakers. However, I don’t think it should give grey life. You should take the full, direct damage from any attack you absorb. However, I think that the concept of charging specials from SFxT was a good idea and bringing something similar by making the red focus guarentee a counterhit on the next hit (regardless of whether or not your next attack was blocked, whiffed, or you were hit) would be pretty useful as that gives people a reason to waste 3 bars on a red focus dash cancel. Obviously, if you release a red focus regardless of level it should count as a counter hit itself. Only level 3 should be unblockable and it should be the same animation, startup, recovery, active frames, etc. as a regular focus attack with the added bonus of counter hit damage added onto the regular focus damage. This makes it good but not broken.

For the command, the only 3 decent ones I can think of is MP, MK, MP, MK or MP+MK+HP+HK or down, down, MP+MK. Making it 2 punches or 2 kicks will inevitably mess up some people’s EX moves (or mess up their red focus). Most combinations are going to affect plinking or someone’s move.

552

My main game is actually ST, been playing it for years. I feel this game (SF4) is more based on offense. Just how I see it. For many, many character it’s about getting in and keeping on constant pressure, at least when you’re Claw, Juri, or Dudley on the receiving end. In ST, you don’t have to worry about Focus Attack, Dashes, Dash Cancels, and 20 hit combos. You can also protect your own corner, unlike SF4. You can poke, poke, poke and poke and while that’s offense pressure it’s not like get in your face play style. You wont’ find many characters who want to get in your face other than Boxer and maybe Honda and DeeJay, but that’s really if he gets a knock down and he starts his cross ups. Still, DJ is more than happy to sit back and throw fireballs and AA if you try to get in. ST is so focused on zoning, spacing, and footsie, that SF4 literally feels rush down focused for most of the cast. I dunno, just coming from ST alone makes me feel like SF4 is a much more offense based game than ST, and poking doesn’t seem nearly as effective in SF4 as it does in ST, and that mostly seems to me because of stuff like Focus Attack.

You could apply the same principles you talked about to ST.

Walking beats blocking (includes throwing)
Blocking beats poking
Poking beats walking

Except in SF4 you need to add:

Focus beats poking
Focus beats fireball
Walking/Dashing beats Focus (includes throwing)

Since there is no Focus Attack, you can actually poke. You can actually zone and fireballs also actually matter. Also, because Focus Attack is so strong, it rewards a lot of damage on a dash cancel. Yeah, you have to wise up and not poke at random or in a pattern that people say “he’s going to poke let me Focus Attack that,” but I scratch my head wondering why should I even bother to poke?? People can learn the distance that you go for a poke to give them a little pressure of walking in and they can focus attack if you do it again. I guess it all comes down to training your opponent, and psyching them out by not going for a cr.mp, or at least have meter if they soak the first hit so you can EX FBA.

Of course this is how I see things as a ST player. Even Alpha 2 doesn’t seem as offensive as SF4 does, but I don’t main Alpha so I can’t really say much, I just play it for fun once in a blue moon since none of my local friends play. I don’t play Alpha 3, it doesn’t really feel like a SF game to me but I do love the roster and the presentation.

Anyway, I don’t want to get too off topic, and I apologize for writing a dictionary there, so if you want we can talk via PM about that subject, lol.

How about that mask throw idea? I’d love to be able to break armor with a mask projectile. The nice thing about it is that you take the risk of more damage if you can’t get it back and you can’t just throw out masks like no tomorrow since you’d have to go pick it up. I like thinking about stuff like giving risks to buffs so that nothing is ever OP. “What’s that red flash! Throw that shit!” I also think it’s be pretty funny :slight_smile:

553

True. Thinking of it, red focus would also be a great counter for Dictator’s LK-Scissors pressure, as the move isn’t armor break at all. YAY ! (^o^)/

I think overall it will force players to stay at lights hitconfim instead of blindly canceling with specials. Vega can do that from farther than others. =)

At top level, there is a defensive phase, as there are little safe ways in aside of footsies. But once you get the knowdown, the game becomes kinda vortex oriented, and becomes very offensively oriented. So it’s balanced for me, aside of inequalities between characters. And red focus could help fix that for those vulnerable to frame-traps. =)

554

Has there been any word on other buffs besides more jab stun and faster Ultra start up? More jab stun is nice and all but then they showed us Red Focus, so I’m not really sure it’s all that great of a buff now. How often are we actually Jab-Jab-Jabbing anyway?

555

I do. I do drop it half of the time, but cLP cLP hitconfirm is something a Claw must acquire when trying to get at highers levels of play. It’s our fastest contact hitconfirm.

Though one can get quite far without using it, Vega’s Bn’Bs involving his mediums a lot more than his lights normals. But +1 histun, I think it’ll become a lot more popular.

I do hope it will allow cLp cLp cLP LP-RCF to combo against more characters. It’s not that reliable against large hitboxes, nor standing ones for half of the cast. =)

556

In ST 1-2 combos can kill, only offense builds meter, and the game is much much faster paced. Blocking is nowhere near as strong because the stages are shorter, chip does more, and again only offense builds meter. A2 and A3 introduced custom combos which pretty much became the focal point of the game utilizing relentless offensive pressure.

Cammy, Yun, yang, Akuma, Ryu, Gief, Sagat, Seth, and Sakura are all characters that heavily rely on offense, but that doesn’t make the entire game offensive. Vega on the other hand has almost no safe offense at all. His only blockstrings are normals cancelled into a special. Vega at best has a cautious offense because of it.

Vega’s pokes in ST are a bit safer because the opponent can’t FADC a DP to make it safe… and because the opponent can’t focus through them (as you said). If anything, the lack of focuses are a reason ST and A2 are more offensive, not less.

In the fundamental example I gave Focuses count as pokes and beat walking (not poking… any more than any other poke would beat poking).

But I get what you are saying. There is more offense in this game because combos don’t do as much damage as they used to. So instead of 1-2 combos killing it’s 3-5 (with a few exceptions) so the sheer amount of offense has gone up. Just make sure you’re not saying that the game is more offense based simply because you play a character that lacks good offensive tools.

As for mask throw… it’s a gimmick. Anything other than removing the meter cost to taking it off is worthless.

557

st.lk, cr.lp, cr.mp xx ex fba is my way to go over that 1 frame link limitation, plus i can use it without a care of charge! woo!

558

I hope it turns out to be a good buff. Damage is pretty good on 3 or 4 cr.jabs linked to cr.strong xx EXFBA but at the moment it’s ridiculously tough to pull off. Even 2 jabs give more damage than cr.forward, cr.strong xx EXFBA, so maybe it will get some good usage.

So much easier to build meter in ST though. ST is faster paced but I feel it’s less focused on offense because zoning and footsies are much more prominent part of the game. Everything in that game is about controlling space. Even the offensive characters need to be patient and work their asses off to get in on any other character. Even the ass tiers like Cammy and Blanka have good tools to keep other characters out. Sometimes it just feels like in SF4 people get in easy and it’s like damn, I might as well put my stick down and watch the show. It doesn’t help this is the first SF I’ve played where I can’t defend my corner, the game lets the other player jump right behind so that’s another reason I feel the defense options in the game are less viable.

I also disagree on pokes in ST. I see it as if I poke and they block, well that’s pretty solid defense since I can’t do much after except poke again. But in SF4 you could crumple from counter or get FADC’d. That to me is much more offensive than being able to block pokes safely. Sure, Focus can be used as armor for defense but that’s not really the main use of the tool anymore, it’s evolved a bit beyond just armor. It has some defensive uses but seems to tilt a more towards offense, you’re really just looking for a way to soak a hit and dash away safely or soak a hit and punish. The reward for the offensive option though is much greater which is why I consider it a more offensive tool.

I don’t think the game is more offensive because I’m playing Vega, I just think in general it’s more offensive because that’s how it seems to me from my perspective of the over all game and what I’ve seen is the usual for most characters I’ve come across. Some of the ridiculous things I’ve seen happen in the game drives me nuts, lol, and I can’t fathom why some of it is in the game.

Anyway I agree the current mask throw is a gimmick but if you could toss it from the right distance and hit someone charging focus to shatter armor then Cosmic Heel them, I think that would be fun and useful for something that burns meter for no reason and is currently a gimmick.

559

1-3 cr.lp combo to ex fba does the same damage, only slightly more stun. any more and it’ll do less damage, hence why i prefere starting my links with st.lk.

cr.mk, cr.mp xx ex fba does more damage. funnily enough, cr.mk, cr.lp, cr.mp xx ex fba does the same damage as the one just mentioned.

560

Well at least the latter will be easier to do now, less dropped combos is pretty good. It’s funny how hard some of his links are compared to other members of the cast which feels like you don’t even have to try to link jabs.