I know this is a tough question. I ask this because I recently started playing Sagat and read up on wiki about Sagat’s history. I didn’t know that it was Dan’s father who destroyed Sagat’s eye in a fight and then Sagat killed his father in a fit of rage.
There actually is a very deep story for Dan’s history. I’ve come to respect him to the point where I want him to be viable at a mid-tier range rather than at a lower-tier range. I feel like his fighting spirit is strong even though he’s very silly, and he’s trained enough and with enough passion to become a solid fighter rather than viewed solely as a character to not be taken seriously.
I’m not saying to turn Dan into something he’s not. I don’t want him to become some super serious guy. Actually for all I know the majority concensus might be that Dan is already a solid mid-tier. I don’t play him so I don’t know. For all I know, people might actually want him to stay lower tier since they enjoy purposely playing the underdog and making him stronger relative to other characters would take away from the reason they play Dan.
I don’t know, I was wondering what others thought.
P.S. Dan’s lk dan kick is ironically similar in function to Sagat’s lk tiger knee. He actually fights with his own version of a technique of his arch enemy!
Likewise, but I just play Dan because I like him. He should still be Dan, but not stupidly crippled, if that makes any sense. Dan’s lk knee missing crouching opponents sometimes or his hitbox on his Gadouken are examples of this.
K… I have no right to be saying what Dan should be because I don’t play him. I play Sagat and I want Sagat to be the best representation of what Sagat is. Dan players know better than I what the best representation of Dan is so they should be the ones whose voice is heard.
Dan’s kick is not a version of Tiger Knee per se. Dan’s history is that he trained shortly with Gouken and then trained mostly in Muay Thai. So his moveset reflects that quite well: you have some weaker and bastardized versions of the shoto moveset, some flash moves ( like cl.hk) and a ton of muay thai moves, including knees, elbows, his st.mk which is identical do Adon’s st.hk, as well as yes the Danku which is similar to the Tiger Knee.
As for the question, I’ve played Dan since he first appeared on Alpha and it’s not his place to be mid tier. Low tier is good enough, as long as he doesn’t suck completely. In SF4 he is FUN as hell but constrained by the sluggishness of his moves.
Some MINOR tweaks to him would be enough, in my opinion. And you’ll find that most Dan players will feel the same way. This is the underdog forum, this is the Saikyo corner. The list of requests for buffs for Dan was MINIMAL compared to those of other characters, and mostly related to malfunctioning moves.
Even relatively mild requests that could make him more than a bit stronger were received with some mistrust, like hard knockdown on EX danku.
In my shitty Dan opinion, I’d ask for:
Minor increase to walkspeed
Fix danku hitbox
Gadoken hurtbox reduced please
-more damage on ultra 2
-More range on Ultra 1
a better hit confirm combo, maybe 2 chainable cr.lks
that’s it. Even if he got ALL of that he’d STILL be bottom tier, and that’s BEFORE everyone else gets their round of buffs.
Pretty much this, though, I’d personally like some new toys to play with. Not necessary of course, but it’d freshen things up a bit.
I’d add:
Full juggle on Ex gadouken.
Taunts, safe on hit, provides barely enough hitstun to be combo’d from. Maybe some other fun properties.
Use for MP Koryuken. Ryu-esque juggle maybe?
There was also some stuff mentioned in the suggestions thread that I feel would be appropriate to add:
P in Hissou-Buraiken should be changed to K.
Vacuum effect on all buraiken hits to improve comboability , OR a similar mechanic to Balrog’s super/ultra where he does Koryu-rekka if you hold down kick buttons. L for no hop, M for a small hop, and H for a large hop forward, like it’s older incarnations. But, it does less damage if you use it, around 300-320 Damage instead.
There’s probably some stuff I’m forgetting, I’ll update if I remember anything else.
I have a question. I want to make it its own thread lol but I don’t want to clog up the Dan section especially when I don’t play the character, so I’ll keep it in my thread.
Do you think in all of Dan’s time training that he learned some sort of… I don’t know command normal overhead? If so, what do you think it would be like? Or perhaps you think the opposite. If so, why would Dan abstain from learning/using a command normal overhead?
Edit: I do see that Dan tends to trip tumble forward a lot. Maybe he could incorporate this into some sort of overhead technique for his Saikyo style.