there’s always been a gap in HHS, I’ve been DP’d, super’d etc. through it since forever
…alternatively, Yun and Yangs dives look fast as hell compared to the earlier tests (possible due to the fact that the only loctest AE footage was shitty 1920s cellphone cameras) but still, I’m not really worried about the twins.
I imange in the yun vs. honda matchup is going to consist of both players whiffing palms and oichios fullscreen and building super, first person to hit the other one wins!
Honda is my boi. I refuse to leave him just because a nerf here and there. I’ll be sucking it up and sticking it out till the end.
I’m going to spend another 30 dollars at the arcade and see if I can still enjoy throwing money away.
No probs matey. I’ve taken loads from this forum, so I’m glad I can be of some actual use for once.
I jumped back on SSF4 this morning (training mode and arcade) to get a more accurate appraisal of AE Honda, and I noticed the following five points.
Also, I have been informed by a friend that the usual HHS links worked against the characters he played, but I’ll try and confirm that for you in the near future.
I spent the whole arcade run-through forgetting that I can use LP HB. Profound sadness ensued.
cr.MK -> HHS seemed to have more leeway for inputs in AE, which would explain why it felt funny to me on the first day.
Pokes didn’t seem any different, while the footsie game was the same as far as I can tell bar a drop in damage. Counter hits seem to deal more damage in SSF4, I feel.
Jump-in HK, st.HK and cl.MP -> HHS will be useful in AE because they deal more damage than they should considering their ease of input. For the opposite reason, LP x 3 into HB will not be as useful unless you want to get the opponent the hell away from you.
I don’t think he’s the worst character in the game by any stretch of the imagination - Blanka was wofeul, Cammy not much better and Ibuki looked like a one-trick pony. I also hear that Dudley isn’t up to much, Hawk is still weak as long as you stay on the ground and Gen is actually worse than in Super. Overall, he’ll be a decent if not spectacular mid-tier character, with the ability to beat top tier characters. Also, the aforementioned friend said that Seth is easier to deal with now that he can’t spam j.HP and run away all day.
Once the move comes out, it’s quick and the LK version is annoying because it swoops in. That said, it can’t be used instantaneously like Rufus’ dive kick, so you know when it’s coming and can react accordingly depending on distance (close: block or hit HP and hope for the best, jab range range: jump, further out: block for your life). One man I saw was using them very effectively against a Sagat and a Viper, but the people I faced quite frankly didn’t. Mix-ups could be an issue, however.
On the plus side, Yun is squishy and dies quite easily once you get in. Watch out for random palms once you get close and you’ll be fine. Use HB from no further out than Ryu cr.MK range for added safety. I saw that Daigo reckons Yun has very few weak match-ups, but this will be a 5-5 due to Yun’s low health. Honda still hits hard against low stamina rivals.
double post - doritos go well with pasta, the new Christian Bale/Marky Mark movie is pretty good.
that’s good stuff, great to hear (read) - please keep it coming!
It’s for posts like these that I wish they still had the rep system, thanks again for these, they’re really interesting to read!
I’m glad to hear that Hands remain relatively intact. He was low tier in vanilla, high tier in SSF4; I think I can settle for a solid mid tier. EX Headbutt is unchanged, and that move is obviously very important. He’s pretty much the same, we just need to up our reaction time with less reliable anti-airs.
I still don’t understand the rationale behind nerfs; I feel like they’re unwarranted almost 100% of the time. Obviously blatantly broken things need to be fixed, but there was nothing broken about Honda, or anyone else in SSF4. In fact, everyone is fairly tame. SSF4: AE nerfs have only served to alienate and frustrate players, a lot of characters had tools taken away with little to replace them. Like I could fully understand if a Cammy player wanted to drop the game; dive kick pressure is really fun, but she can’t do it anymore without meter. Nerfs make the game less fun. Balancing should alway seek to maximize fun. I think it was Sirlin who said that haha.
Carltwo, Tofu Warrior, I’m glad you both enjoyed them - thanks for reading them! I’m going to go and play some more with a close mate after my footy game this afternoon, so I’ll post anything I noticed later. To be fair, even if I don’t notice anything, I’ll post anyway. As an aside, the mate I’m going with is a Guy player with good normal timing, so I’ll get him to try out Honda and see if he notices anything. His Honda is so bad that it brings a tear to my eye, but maybe for that reason he’ll notice something that I have overlooked.
I also have to apologise, because I’m heading back to my parents’ place in Britain for Christmas on Tuesday, so tonight may be the last time I get any game time until New Year’s Day. Sorry about that.
Precisely, Honda is now more then ever a read and react character with an iron defence. Personally, I like it like that. I too would settle for mid-tier once the dust settles and people learn a bit more about their characters. From what I have seen, it looks as though top tier in Japan will be Yun, Sagat, Yang and Boxer, with a few more close behind.
I agree wholeheartedly. I understand that essence of fighting games means that there will be some characters which are slightly better than others, but balancing should mean buffs for those who need buffs, not nerfs for those who are strong. People do not like seeing moves taken away when they have spent hours practising them and thinking of ways of using them. I thought Super was very well balanced overall, so there was no need for big changes in AE. Unfortunately, it appears that the dev team have listened to the less competitive side of its fan base, those who moan that a character is “cheap”, “overpowered” or “broken” when they lose. Nerfs seem to say, “This character cannot be beaten any other way, so we made him weaker for you.” Even Sagat in Vanilla was not invincible and was in fact my favourite match-up (because it offered the most opportunity to improve against shotos), so the massive nerf to him in Super upset me a little. In short, buffs and slight adjustments = welcome, nerfs = not.
By the way, I played an online version of Sirlin’s new card game a couple of days ago. I enjoyed it a lot. Much more than I did the Remix mode in HD Remix, anyway.
for cammy’s tkcs obviously cr tech is suicide so will a st fp beat the spike or must i ex hb or slam?
Hello again all. Just a few random notes from today’s play:
I tried a few different links off EX HHS and noticed that it’s pretty much the same as it was before. cr.LP links as per usual, cr.LK came out but whiffed and anything else left me open for pain. cr.LK comes out in 5 frames I think, so at first glance I thought that there was a frame advantage increase, but by the time it came out Hakan was out of hit stun, so I probably would have eaten a DP against someone else.
I played one round using nothing but butt splash in different situations (luckily, I knew the opponent and he was happy to oblige in trying different things). I still wouldn’t recommend it as an AA, but the EX version stuffed a badly spaced Yun dive kick when performed late (the MK version lost out to the dive kick). The cross-up butt splash into throw/Ochio tick still worked but damage has been reduced on the latter. The butt splash into super/ultra looks like it’s still in there, but I didn’t have the wits about me to try it. Sorry.
The Guy player left after a few games because he had an appointment with a pint of Yebisu, but his overall opinion was that he wouldn’t be as scared to walk forward a little because of the damage nerf to st.HK. Interestingly, he thought that jumping in at Honda is still risky for characters like Guy unless it is followed by a grab or a move with a small hurt box. As an aside, it was a joy to watch him time cr.LK, cr.LK, cr.LP perfectly then stand there blocking because he can’t piano Hands. It worked too - the other dude (a flowchart Ken) mashed EX Shoryuken and my friend nailed him with a U2!
cr.LP -> HP HHS -> FADC backwards made a few people panic. I used it half as a test, half as a laugh, and successfully performed it on three people. I left enough space in between them to make sure nobody was watching, because others watching will catch on quickly to it. One crouch teched resulting in no physical gain, but one threw out a late sweep for which he got punished and another tried a HK Rising Jaguar for which he paid dearly.
Now for some non Honda-related points.
Hakan is now a handy character. His oil after a slide is as quick as Usain Bolt on steroids and can link off four or five different regular normals, his command normal f+HP hits hard and his jump grab seemed to hit a lot more. I’m quite impressed.
Conversely, I wasn’t impressed with what I saw of Juri. Only one bloke used her so it might just be his skill level, but it looked like she’ll have a hard time controlling space on the ground, while her Fuhajin buff didn’t seem to do her any good unless used at point-blank range.
I was pleased to see people hanging around the AE machine, waiting to play. Up until last week, the same 9~10 people would play with the occasional salaryman joining in. Because I was playing the same people, I became used to their play styles and so found myself losing the first couple of games of a set to DP-mashing Ryu players. Today there were a lot of high school kids seeing as it’s a Sunday, but some of them were very good. Hopefully they stick around for the foreseeable future because I don’t want to be fighting the same 9 people in 3 years’ time.
I was also happy to see a variety of characters being used. I have played just under half of the cast now and have seen all but Gouken, Rose and Fuerte. It makes a refreshing change from playing 500 games against Ryu then one against Gouki.
Right, that’s probably it from me until the new year, so apologies for that. I’ll try and get back on the machine as soon as I can. I hear that Heathrow is closed still and may be closed again tomorrow - if I get stuck at Narita, I think a trip to get bodied at Taito Station or somewhere will be in order.
With that, I’m off to bed because I have work in 5 hours. Good night!
The way I play E.Honda, granted I’m still a beginner with him (and he’s my secondary), I don’t think the nerfs will affect me all that much. w00t. I rarely used lp headbutt for AA, mostly I would use EX headbutt, nuetral jump fierce, butt splash and stand fierce (I know the latter two not always the greatest AA). I didn’t try to stuff things with jump medium punch much. I rarely used U2 (cos I suck with 720s), but I think I’m gonna start using it more now. I’m glad U1 got buffed as it has always been my ultra of choice. As long as all hands combos remain in tact minus a few oddball cases (like Abel), I’m fine. I’ve been working on always getting fierce HHS or EX HHS on command from all normals that can cancel into them (jab, cr. short, stand strong, forward), as well as doing HHS > HHS and EX hands loops, and I’ve gotten pretty good at doing all of that. I’m glad my training hasn’t gone to waste in that regard. Pianoing FTW. The damage reduction I agreed with from the get go. Just sucks that he has no reliable normal AA still, and Honda has more of a propensity to be kept out but what you gonna do?
I can understand why Mike Ross would be salty over AE changes with his style of play, no doubt my favorite Honda to watch, but to say he’s the worst character? We exaggerating. From reading some of these posts sounds like Honda can still be a tank.
^^ cool story bro, just my personal story/feelings.
So you tried out AE Honda? What are your thoughts? I take it you think he’s ass…
So according to this video, dudley U1 doesn’t punish EX headbutt anymore.
18:39
[media=youtube]fzHOHet4xKM[/media]
It could be that ex headbutt has a tiny bit less recovery or more block stun and I haven’t heard anything about dudley’s U1 getting more start up frames. Could also be that there is more pushback (meaning it could still work if dudley blocked it standing). Doesn’t really balance out the nerfs by any means, but hey, it’s something.
has anyone tested lp headbutt against meaty crouching japs or sweep attempts? This seems like a good turn of strategy for honda if it works as hoped. You could also work in cancel to super.
I didn’t test that, mainly because I personally don’t tend to HB my way out of such situations. I’ll put it on my ‘to-do’ list for when I come back from Britain.
I’m going to keep my first impressions pretty short because I’m sure there will be a shit load of these posts.
I feel the loss of lp headbutt AA means that playing offensively (in most matchups anyway) will be more crucial in round one. In this round you should be doing all your conditioning of your opponent and meter build. Make them think that you can’t turtle to a timeout in the next round with your full super bar.
Learning to AA with U1 is almost something that you need to be able to pull off consistently. Don’t let them think that losing lp headbutt AA means they’re allowed to jump in when you have no ex.
The damage nerfs are very noticeable, so mental stamina becomes more important as rounds take longer to finish.
So cr.lp xxx HHS input is the same or became harder?
Sorry if i missed the post.
It’s the same, but there’s a slight possibility that reversaling the HHS is easier, so one should attempt to get their hands motion as fast as possible, to the point where HHS won’t come out on whiffed lp, just to make the smallest possible reversal gap.
If he’s building meter, standing roundhouse or EX Headbutt. You can usually catch him since he always does more than one. During a combo, EX Headbutt or block, maybe jab headbutt. Standing Fierce is too slow. Maybe a Buttslam but I’d be afraid of that wiffing from up close.