Yeah fairly bleh neutral but solid damage and options. Going to be demanding on the 1-hit hit confirms and using your meter pretty much perfectly. If you do that it looks like he will be reasonably solid assuming certain questionable matchups don’t get worse over time. Looking mid-tier maybe even upper mid tier if things go well.
Careful guys. Get too positive and we’re gonna get nerfed again.
Where is he generally lacking?
I’m actually hoping out hope release version will be the strongest version of him.
Neutral pokes are … eh … at best outside cr. MP and even then our footsie game is pretty garbage. He is pretty mobile and is able to keep pressure after getting hits unlike most characters and can even keep pressure somewhat after throws (somewhat …). He also has solid safe jump setups after his MK Tatsu combo enders. So that isn’t the end of the world, but you are going to have to be tricky to get hits to setup your pressure against long limbed characters like Chun, Nash, Birdie, and Vega.
Ken is solid…but definitely could use a boost. In the Lab with Karin and chun and OMG their normals are just too yummy. I’m c.mp and dashing with Ken all day. Maybe make his step kick safer on block and his run you can cancel out of sooner if his normals are all going to be this average and short. Damage wise though, he’s a monster, and if we all can get 3/4 of what Momo was doing, we’ll be A-OK.
Still would like a way to play as the best Ken in this game, (V-trigger mode Ken) a bit more reliably than just getting hit. Step kick needs to be safe or a normal move man, can’t just c.mp all day -_-
Don’t know if it’s been said already (likely has) but Ken’s st.rh and st fierce are OSable so that on CC you get the run and on block/hit you don’t. This is probably ten times more useful with st.rh over st.fierce. Poking with far rh with this OS is great in footsies, and was working great for me. St.rh isn’t an amazing poke by any means, but in footsies when standing outside their buttons, fishing with this OS is good because it CCs an awful lot more than you’d think!
Also, Ken’s b.MP does work. It has a great (and I’m guessing wide) hitbox and is confirmable to the TC. Really strong for pressuring people by walking out of their poke range and reacting to their buttons and hitting them with b.MP to TC. I was outpoking low buttons/pokes with it!
I also really like Ken’s AAs. MP DP is nice and beefy, does good damage and rarely if ever trades. Cr fierce is also fantastic for dealing with jumps above your head which are awkward for DP to hit. Even better when cornered where you can do cr.fierce xx run/lk tatsu to corner them, lol. St.Mk and st.MP are also very situational AAs that were doing work for me. too. So I feel like the AA department is really where Ken is not weak.
On a seperate note, what’s Ken’s max damage CC combos meterless? Especially after baiting a DP. Midscreen I was doing st.fierce xx run, lk tatsu, fierce dp, and in corner I was doing st.rh, jab dp, fierce dp, but I’m sure there is better damaging CC combos?
I was just about to say, i kind of wish step kick was a command normal instead of part of his v skill, but I guess, they don’t want him being anything like his sf4 version which is understandable, it would be cool if you could dash cancel out of his run, so you could fake out your opponents and fish for whiff punishes, or press down v skill and you get the classic roll that goes through projectiles, almost all other characters got anti projectile tech, but Ken got the short end of this. These may be bad ideas, but I’m just throwing stuff out.
Also, why the hell did Capcom switch thunder kick and feint inputs? I’m so used to the SF4 way of doing it, and I kept getting feints when I wanted overhead, and vice versa. Jesus Capcom :o
Yeah CC OS’s have been known for awhile.
meterless I believe the best you can get is.
st. FP (CC)->V-skill->TC1->RH Tatsu
st. RH (CC)->V-skill->FP SRK
cr. FP (CC)->MK Tatsu (1-hit)->FP DP (I believe, normally cancel this into v-skill for the run so someone might need to correct me).
No idea man, I’ve caught myself doing the feint multiple times on accident because of this. Damn muscle memory.
I believe the change to thunder kick was to match how the step kick works now: press for just the movement option, hold for the kick.
I realized Ken is pretty weak against 3f jabs, and here is my reasoning:
Ken can only confirm into TC from cr.MP, but cr.MP is only +1 on block, and every single button afterwards, except b+MP, will lose or trade.
b+MP links into nothing and can only be followed up with his TC or hadoken, but b+MP xx hadoken is often times punishable, and while his TC xx Special is confirmable, u need to cancel it into EX Hadoken to be safe.
U can’t walk back to whiff punish their 3f jab either since it locks u down on the ground. (At least against Necalli’s st.LP, this is the character I’ve been testing it with.)
So if u have no meter to make your TC safe, or no VT to follow up the b+MP xx hadoken, Ken’s pressure game becomes weak, or rather gutsy imo, at least against characters with 3f normals.
Ken’s cr.MP should really be +2 on block imo.
You should have seen the skies falling down when we saw that +2->+1 nerf before we got to play the beta. Dark times man. Personally if they just made b. MP + on block I could deal with it or give us back a 3f jab. Having to use b. MP for everything but it having shit range and being -2 isn’t particularly fun. This b. MP->cr. MK gimmick a lot of Ken’s are doing isn’t going to last forever. They don’t want cr. MP to be +2 based on the nerf so agree they need some change to make up for it. cr. MP->cr. MP also beats cr. jab mash if you are at the right range so it isn’t particularly bad.
Yeah having to use meter in the corner to not be in a bad position definitely stinks.
Cr.MP, cr.MP currently doesn’t work against 3f jabs tho, which is something that definitely should work imo.
And like, even if they made Ken’s jab 3f, sure you’d be able to beat your opponent their jab after landing cr.MP, but u can’t link into anything because of pushback.
EDIT: b+MP being + on block, or at the very least 0, would be nice indeed.
after playing the beta all weekend and played a lot of top 100, i can say i have to work a lot harder than all the Karins and Nash did, absolutely impossible matchups
also shoutout to SimSim’s Dahlsim, the best player i have seen all beta so far (he knew what he was doing)
also i found a new high damaging combo that didn’t work before , i know people found out medium v-trigger tatsu juggles better
in V-Trigger
Cross Up Tatsu -> b. mp -> Medium Tatsu -> Super or Shoryuken
also new Step Kick into V-Trigger is good but couldn’t test it if its + on block
I feel like the nash match up is even in phase 4.
nash ain’t as strong vs ken compared to characters like vega, karin, cammy or necalli
and has lots of 5/5 match ups from my exp.
I might be completely wrong though
Eh if Ken corners them they are both in a heap of trouble and given his f. throw and corner carry that isn’t an impossible task. EX Divekick seems to be pretty critical in both matchups, but given we don’t have much of a ranged game getting meter is pretty rough. They might be bad, but from a day 1 perspective impossible is a bit of an exaggeration.
Nash
Also with Cammy I can punish f. HP (-13) from Nash with HK Spiral Arrow, (7f) I bet Ken has some type of punish on it like EX Tatsu (8f). Also Ken can completely shut down his moonsault game where then he is fighting Ken with buttons that have more range … but no damage. 1 whiff punish or lucky sweep and all of a sudden Ken is inside and Nash can’t do much to get out if you throw his v-reversal or uppercut his v-trigger escape attempt. He can try throwing out something preemptively to get out but then he gets opened up. Definitely not unwinnable.
Karin
Rougher but it looks like we can punish sweep then just have to worry about cr. MK. Ken can beat all her shenanigans so it is going to come down to finding a way to keep her limited then finding a way to get opportunities from footsies which we talked about much of the last page. Think it is rough, but I beat more Karin’s in the top 100 then I did Birdie’s in the top 500 so I’m not convinced this matchup is as bad as Birdie yet.
you can medium tatsu against f.Hp of Nash and Ex Shoryuken Punish Karin’s Sweep
also i sound like a scrub, but iam using against matchups with better footsie buttons “Random” Medium Tatsus,
I actually have to disagree. I think Ken’s buttons and special moves lend themselves to counter poking more than being the type of buttons you bully someone with.
EX Tatsu, V-Skill, and V-Trigger actually make it so if you can hit an opponent’s buttons you can immediately get in their face. Ken’s not going to dominant the neutral game, but then again his tools are set up so he only needs one good hit to get out of the neutral game.
I thought there was a priority system where medium buttons win out against light buttons if they both go active on the same frame? If so that would mean target combo would always beat jab.