Those buffs are very good. I’m just dissapointed with U1. U1 sucks ass. The air slasher with less recovery is great for zoning purposes. Especiallly against characters like Blanka, Gief and Chun Li. They can get in too easy on reaction. The buff also allows you enough time to choose the most consistant anti air for the situation. I really hate having to use far mp, or cr. hp when far fp is the best AA for a specific jump in. Sometimes I get stuck inbetween and I backdash just to get OS sweeped. This buff along will give characters like Balrog, Fei Long, and Gief some serious problems. It would be hell for them to get in.
The upkicks buff is really great. The Mk version starts off with more invincibility which means it will be a more consistant AA. And remember… FADC is not required for the mk, or hk upkick follow up. Juggle, juggle, juggle. Ain’t nothing wrong with more damage
Cr.Rh is questionable. I don’t know if that means that it will be safer and/or will opponents juggle for U2/mk follow up more and/or will it hit safe jumpers more. I can’t make a comment until we get more information.
Dashing improvements means more damage. Now if I could dash U2 like I could dash Ultra with other characters… man oh man. Also after a confirmed hit lvl 2 FA, following ups is so strict now, because DJ dash is hella goofy. This buff should make it alot easier
Far MK buffer??? Doesn’t make any sense. I don’t get it
The Sobait frame advantage might be my favorite. Not only is it harder to punish Sobaits but it also pushes your opponent back. This is really needed against grapplers and rush down charcters. It will also close some of the game against Guile and Chun.You can also FADC out of sobait to make some more interesting combos and mixups.
The key points to this buff is damage, comeback ability and his zoning will be easier. I’m loving it.
And please don’t forget that other characters are getting nerfs so expect more 6-4 matches for DJ
I think Dee Jay’s character identity in this game is very clear. He’s very similar to the Blanka character design and they’ve taken steps to reinforce this character identity instead of patching the holes. Both are meter hoarding characters who have (near)perfect anti-air and anti-projectile capabilities. They have no viable ground-to-ground reversal seemingly by design (unless forward upkicks/EX elec now act as anti-ground reversals which I doubt strongly in both cases). Blanka has an array of above average normals that he can use at mid-range whereas Dee Jay has a fireball. By speeding up the fireball the goal here is to give it mid-range capabilities similar to a poke and (hopefully) similar to how Guile has closed up his mid-range holes in previous games. They’re very similar character designs which is why neither are very good in SSF4. Neither have what it takes to be good in this particular version of the game. While Blanka was better in Super, Dee Jay seems to be getting the better end of the stick in AE (mostly because Blanka has essentially been taken out of AE), but that fireball better be damn good to give him a mid-range game and cover up for his poking holes.
On the positive side. The changes made to Guile from vanilla to Super were not large. The global changes made to the game helped him out tremendously. This will surely help us in AE. I consider Bison to be Dee Jay’s 3rd worst match in Super (behind Guile/Dhalsim). Putting on my robe and theory fighter cap I’m pretty sure that Dee Jay will beat Bison in AE even if his normals get no buff whatsoever. By improving Dee Jay’s fireball and making Bison’s U2 a charge move, it becomes much easier to deal with Bison in the mid-range. If he’s sitting still, walk away from him until he breaks charge, then you throw fireballs and force him to jump in where he’s very easy to anti-air. If he’s not sitting still, throw fireballs; very similar to how Guile plays this match in Super and Guile beats him for free. There are a couple other characters (Abel, Zangief) whose best tools that bothered us the most are more or less going away which will benefit us. Also as I said in a previous post in this thread, SF4 is a game where the lead itself is a weapon. Dee Jay is a bad character in Super, but if you spot me 20% every round, I’d probably only lose to 4-5 characters because I could play the whole match conservatively and grind the win out. Buffed damage means more time turtling and less time opening up windows for the other side to damage me, a big help.
On the negative side. SF4 is a game that has always been about 2 things. Strong normals and getting damage in large chunks. Honda in SSF4 is a bad character in a vacuum. He has virtually no tools at all. He’s still top tier in Super because he does too much damage. Dee Jay in AE will still have no way to get damage without dash->U2 unless U1 now juggles cleaner off of normal juggle starters. Unless his fireball is completely like Guile’s (and I can’t see Capcom making the same mistake twice) as long as there are characters with projectile evasion tactics that don’t require charge and strong mid pokes, Dee Jay will struggle against them. If Blanka can slide air slasher on reaction still, he will still beat Dee Jay in AE. If Fei can EX CW through fireballs, he will still crush Dee Jay in AE. So on and so forth.
So yeah, again, be happy, we got good changes, but I’ll be pretty surprised if he’s a top character in AE.
I just wish the range on his close moves got buffed : Close standing HK as a close anti air would be nice~
Or if he had a strong poke besides standing medium kick. Ive been able to frame trap ppl with it though, but i have to be so close which sucks.
If they upped the range and hitbox of his c.mp and close standing mp that would be really cool. I really like DJ’s close standing mp but you’ve got to be soo close for it to come out. If you could do 2 c.lps into a clst.mp that would be hella cool and great for his sobat FADC combos.
I feel the same way when it comes to losing. I keep telling myself I’m basically playing one of the underdog characters, which kind of relieves some of the rage that derives from losing, lol.
Like Da Knut said, if dash U2 will be as easy to pull off as other character’s, it will help his damage output, which is definitely something he needs and is something to look forward to. Right now dash U2 it’s just too much of a difficult (for me at least) tool to rely on all the time. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in training trying to nail it, and no doubt most Dee Jay players have as well.
In the end, let’s hope that these changes to Dee Jay will net him some better match ups.
If DJ will be able to combo out of sobat FADC that greatly increases his damage potential as well. Doing a bit of my own theory fighting for combos that may be possible…
HIT CONFIRMS
cr.lp > cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat FADC cr.lp > cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat would do 301 damage
cr.lp > cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat FADC cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat would do 314
if there’s enough frame advantage for the cl.st.mk after the sobat FADC
PUNISHES
j.hk, cr.hp xx hk sobat FADC cr.lp > cl.st.mk > cr.mp > hk sobat would do 416 damage
j.hk, cr.hp xx hk sobat FADC cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat would do 429 damage
cr.hp xx hk sobat FADC cr.lp > cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat would do 331
cr.hp xx hk sobat FADC cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat would do 340 damage
RANDOM HIT
hk sobat FADC cr.lp > cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat would do 270
hk sobat FADC cl.st.mk > cr.mp xx hk sobat would do 282
using EX sobat instead to go through a fireball would do the same damage as the random hit but for 3 bars.
All in all, this gives DJ ways to maximize his damage in situations where his damage was lacking without it: mid-screen. His corner combos are capable of similar damage numbers off 1 meter, but outside the corner he tops out at arond 250-280 damage. sobat FADC should allow him to do as much damage on a lucky hit as he currently does for a full punish. Add dash U2 to this and he will have FAR more damage potential mid screen than he does now.
I’m not good enough at spacing and zoning to even attempt to predict how sobat FADC might change his ability to get around footsies, but it seems like you can now choose instant knee shot or sobat FADC as ways to try and get in from poke range.
We all know this move is hella random. Sometimes it does the version with one hit, sometimes two hits, but it seems impossible to consistently get the two hitter.
I’d like to see the input for the two hit st.MK be changed to a double input, similar to Sagats fake HK input (but maybe a bit more lenient).
What do you guys think of that? It’d make it more useful for dealing with focus attacks and tacking on that little extra bit of damage.
It’d still be range dependent as to whether or not the first hit whiffs. Even if you do the double input you’d still probably only get 1 hit unless you were at the perfect range.
Besides, if you do get the 1 hit version it just takes 1 frame longer to come out, though in SSF4 that means you can’t link into far mk unless you’ll get both hits. They made it 1 frame faster in AE so you can link to it even if the first hit whiffs.
At any rate the AE changes are finished now. If it hasn’t been changed yet, it won’t be for AE.
yeah i don’t understand what they were trying to show in that trailer.
Cause for all the other characters, they were showing new abilities (Hawk’s EX Dive, Cammy’s ridiculous new combo, Hakan doing… something)
But the clip of deejay just shows something he can already do. I watched that part like 5 times in a row making sure i didn’t miss anything. Maybe they were just showing the mk upkick because it got buffed (although they didn’t really demonstrate how it is buffed in that video).
Edit: what they should have done was show the mk upkick cleanly beat a deep jumping mp from Honda. that would make my panties wet.