Yeah there’s definitely a few characters like Ginyu and Krillin that I would put in some type of B tier. Don’t see them rising up to anything crazy. Yamcha should probably go up a bit, but without changes to the game he isn’t going to be top tier I don’t think.
Hmmm…I’m kinda iffy about that “new” team if that’s the team he will use. Firstly, if he’s going to use Cell first that’s kind of an issue as then there’s no reason to put A.Gohan first and while Cell is clearly top tier, he’s top tier like Magneto is top tier where since everyone plays him, he isn’t going to stun the world with anything you haven’t seen. A.Gohan vs Cell is mostly going to be a player vs player thing minus A.Gohan’s lockdown being even more stupid and having a DP.
The other issue is he fights Dogura’s Kid Buu all the time. Plus I noticed that vs Dogura in Losers Finals at FR, GO1 actually decided to put Cell on point to deal with point Kid Buu. Didn’t even notice that until you brought it up. Which if that’s the case then GO1 is already aware of A.Gohan’s “issues” vs smaller characters. Even then it’s not like he doesn’t land hits vs Dogura’s Kid Buu. He just does shorter strings and tries to pick him out in neutral more.
Gotenks, well he’s supposedly one of the characters with potential mix up/pressure wise and that fits what Sonicfox likes to do. Go in and do stuff.
With that said, ultimately my big issue with his team is that again this is another team without Vegeta assist. Yeah, small characters actually also fare better vs Vegeta assist since they can low profile it a bit better than taller characters, but you’re still not using Vegeta. Kid Buu and Gotenks both dont have assists that are really going to help Cell’s neutral and when you’re fighting A.Gohan at start loaded with Cell and Vegeta assist, that’s not a good look to start with.
Basically Sonicfox is going to have to start on point with Kid Buu or Gotenks to force GO1 to switch to Cell on point and then hope he can dismantle his Cell (which will now have DP assist and Vegeta) to get things going. Theoretically if he can get Cell out of there early he can win the neutral, but A.Gohan to me is still A.Gohan even vs small characters.
A gohan can’t lockdown small characters, his hurricane kick to j.lp wiff against shorties so they can stuff him right there and that reduces a BUNCH of goichis autopilot pressure. Yeah, that set versus Dogura was where I noticed it as well, and after the first set, fox tweeted that A gohan does really well against his characters because he has a field day against them. Still don’t think black is that great, sorry. His mixup isn’t great and he will have to get some better mixup for me to think he deserves that position.
Hit is iffy. Seems like fox makes him better than what he really is. Can’t say I’ve seen any other black or hit really doing things. But I can point to all kinds of 16 players and a gohan players doing shit. To me that’s the telling part of the story. But I’m used to characters being called better than they are because some really good player is owning with them in the early meta of whatever game.
I don’t really like foxes new team either. Not because of vegeta assist… fox has already shown he can beat that assist pretty easily. No, the reason I don’t like that team is because no A gohan and no 16. He just seems to be making a team that is all theory but lacking in guns. But maybe not. Another reason why he seems to be playing that team is because he has some really sick restand resets with kid and cell using gotenks assist, and that will make his damage skyrocket as it generally gives him what he got with 16, but without having to play the big dude or use 3 bars etc etc etc.
I think Hit is solid. If the floor is lava, Hit is the one character that does not care if you are playing the game from the air- his projectile will find you like it’s Liam Neeson and you’ve been taken. He’s got grimy mix-ups, the only downside of which is that he can’t chain them perpetually like A.Gohan can. Best of all, he’s maybe the best character in the game for getting the kill during an opponent’s spark.
I think if there’s any drawback to Hit being on SonicFox’s team, it’s just that Hit doesn’t get much from A16’s assist. Kind of leaves a gap in making certain conversions, or running certain mix-ups, when Black’s assist is unavailable. And obviously A16 is the stronger overall character, so I could see dropping Hit from that team for that reason alone.
That’s the thing about tier lists, they deal in the now, not the what if future. In the what if future ginyu and T gohan and gotenks might be SSS tier. But they aren’t NOW. Hit really isn’t great right now. He’s not bad by any means but the character requires a lot of stuff. I don’t see him being tha much better than any other midtier at this point. Maybe slightly, maybe.
Just something to think about, out of all the possible team combinations there aren’t THAT many teams where all three assists could be said to be really strong choices for both partners.
BGo iirc said all the small characters are good… or better than what people are giving them credit for. I’m left wondering if that’s because of how well they play against a gohan specifically or in just an all around sense. But anyway it goes the small characters all have some pretty big strengths to make up for their obvious deficiencies.
Kid Buu has one of the longest range normals in the game
T gohan has crazy damage
Gotenks has crazy pressure and mixups
In the beginning of the game I was thinking that if the game is actually balanced, then going with a team of little people to access those strengths would make sense. I just never really saw the strength come from them. Now it would seem that they are starting to get figured out or atleast appreciated, but no one is really using them at a super high level yet. The only little person making tournie waves is vegeta atm.
Okay. So about that post about not-that-great anti-airs I intended to write yesterday but forgot because someone gave me beer. Here goes.
If you’ve played Xrd, you know how May has an anti-air 2H? That thing covers huge part of the screen and has almost no deadzone, has good priority and leads to huge damage and nasty setplay if it hits, yet it’s still not considered great of an AA for several reasons: it can get baited out by air options as it has huge recovery on whiff, and it’s kinda slow, so it’s hard to use on reaction. That’s where I feel most 2Hs are in DBFZ, except they often have deadzone angles and have fewer active frames, so they become even harder to time properly. In Xrd that wasn’t really a problem because you often had other, complimentary AAs to cover different angles or situations, and airthrows were the great equalizer even if you lacked consistent answers. In DBFZ most characters only have 2H, and it’s harder to limit air options when vanish and dragondash exists.
It also doesn’t help that 2H really only gives you anything if your opponent commits to something; in Xrd you could FD to block grounded moves even while landing, but because most characters had chain routes out of their AAs, you still had to eat pressure in this situation. 2Hs in DBFZ are the end of every (?) characters’ chain routes, so landing into one and blocking it isn’t that bothersome unless the opponent pre-emptively burns an assist or something to keep you in block stun (or cancel into a special, which will likely drop their combo if their 2H actually hits). You also can’t call people out with an air throw the same way to get them back on the ground either. 16 and K.Buu can snatch people out of the air in this situation, which is an extremely valuable and often overlooked strength imo.
I suspect the plan was to have actually good AA assists to cover this, but that really didn’t happen. The DP assists don’t go high enough and lack invincibility, and Friezas assist doesn’t cover the most valuable part of the screen for our intents and purposes.
My two cents on that subject, from someone who really loves having good AAs.
I think this list is pretty solid overall. The only thing I don’t really agree is the Gotenks placement, but I’m not too familiar with him. Iirc I said here Piccolo sucks in the first weeks, and I still maintain that position. Tien I could see maybe a tier above, but his problem is that he has very bad normals. His lights are above average but his mediums and heavys are bottom tier. He has powerful supers but hurts himself, which is a big deal I think. He is a solid all rounder with good damage, but offers nothing tricky or unique, so you are just better off picking Goku Black, Cell or A. Gohan.
Tien isn’t as good as Cell or A.Gohan, but he’s at least as good as Black. He doesn’t have some one dominant normal some of the other characters can point to, but his specials make up for that. And I don’t agree that his buttons are bad, they all do the job they’re supposed to do. Bad would be T.Gohan’s dinosaur limbs, or watching Fat Buu’s 5L whiff over the head of a standing shorty, or Nappa’s 2H missing low altitude Super Dashes entirely.
The issue with his self damage can be almost entirely managed by playing him as point or mid and using half circle supers to skip using Tri-beam except when you need it to kill.
He’s got the whole high/low/throw/command throw/armored counter move/Chiaotzu telekinesis thing going on, so I’m not sure how much trickier he needs to be. And there’s some stuff out there that his assist is basically best-in-class for. Meterless extensions on T.Gohan rekkas from anywhere on the screen, or setting up Majin Buu fat toss re-stands/resets.
I mean, he isn’t going to hang with the S tier, but that’s not a basement tier character either.