Probably Duo Lon, Takuma, the shoto-like characters.
Seriously, is anyone else having trouble doing HCB/HCF moves? I can’t even do Kyo’s Super and that’s basic as hell and I can do that 9 times out of 10 in OG KOF 98.
I want to avoid the subject since it is against forum rules, but I too have issues. Are you on pad? Similar issues were present back with BBCS but they were cleared up when console version hit. I haven’t tried this on stick yet but I recall things being much easier on stick w/BBCS. Feel free to edit this post Noc/ry if it’s going too far.
As for Mature yes she can still zone but not as good as in 98/02 due to her fireball nerf. It is much smaller and the edge tip is missing which would make it hard to jump, but now it’s not as hard; still she can zone moderately well and her rush down is fairly decent.
I’d say to try out Andy actually.
Also yes there isn’t really a tier list and I believe those ratio matches are based on character usage and not tier placing or anything that. K’ and Raiden are top but after that it’s arguable. Most of the characters in XIII are easy to pick up and solid enough, as Laban mentioned.
King is a zoning character but can be used offensive as Armando has shown past weekend.
Please don’t mention anything about input issues with you all know what. Try to keep it in PMs to avoid anymore talk about it. If anyone needs help on it you can PM me. Keep the thread clean thanks.
Yeah, most zoning characters in the game got a lot more tools such as lower, faster hops and more downward jump-ins to actually do hop pressure. Traditionally, zoners were mainly playing a strong neutral game and then pressed the advantage with blockstrings and traps once going on the offensive. So zoning characters were more passive aggressive than turtley in KOF, similar to how Guile does corner pressure in ST.
Duo Lon is more of a rush down character with great high/low mix ups that include his j.6B aerial chain combos and the ability to confirm his rekkas from jump-ins and empty hop lows and get another mix up after doing his rekka > teleport. Although his extending limbs are quite similar to Dhalsim’s, it’s more of an extended tool in controlling his neutral game and checking the opponent’s counter approach rather than for straight up turtling since he only has two stretched limb attacks on the ground excluding the EX versions, and only two extended limb attacks in the air also baring the EX versions. Coupled with the fact that his cr.C isn’t quite the fastest cr.C in the game to anti-air vertically, he isn’t quite designed to be a zoner or turtle. He already doesn’t do much damage as it is, so he has to make up for it by actually landing rekka combos and going for mix ups compensate. If he just keeps doing limbs, he’s not going to be rewarded as much as if he was played on straight mix up offense. His jump-ins and hop arcs are more designed for rushdown so he’s of that kind of character.
Takuma isn’t quite the zoning character as he used to be like in 98 or 02um Ura Takuma. Takuma’s fireball has quite the increase on start up and recovery compared to past incarnations and it’s more easy to jump over his fireballs than ever before. What Takuma got now though is the ability to confirm Crouching Bs into an actual knockdown without needing meter and is fitted with a command grab now. Add to the fact SNKP retained his really low hop arc and his great j.D that is able to cross up well, Takuma is also suited more as a rushdown character this iteration. His fireball is more of a means to check and balance the ability of zoning characters have upon him.
King is a zoning character in the sense that her projectile is really easy to hop over and encourages the opponent to do so. In return, King has some of the best anti-air normals and air-to-air normals in the game; being: Far C, cl.C, cr.C, st.A, st.D, df.D (slide), j.B (up forward aerial control), j.D (downward horizontal aerial control), and j.CD (both upward and downward horizontal control at the expense of overhead properties). Add in Surprise Rose, EX Surprise Rose, EX Trap Shot, Tornado Kick, EX Tornado Kick, and her newly added aerial Venom Strikes, King controls a vast amount of the aerial space that forces the opponent to take a more grounded approach. With that ground approach, King is able to answer it with Venom Strikes. In a sense, King is more well suited for passive aggressive offense in most games due to the fact that her j.D had to hit late in the past because it came out almost instantly and hitting it early on an opponent doesn’t net a combo. If she has to hit late with it, then the opponent could just do the usual timing on the Option Select st.C/D and hit her out before she lands. Every other attack she had didn’t really have that well of a downward hitbox, but her hop arc was more standard than characters such as Athena/Joe/Kensou. In regards to KOFXIII, I’d say she has the ability to play a more hop oriented game with the homogenization zoning characters undertook to make them more “rushdown” but the old passive aggressive zoning style works just as well.
I wouldn’t say the Shoto characters are that much of zoning characters though in the same sense that Takuma isn’t really a zoning character in the game. They could zone in the old Street Fighter sense but aren’t quite optimally played that way given how the subsystems in KOF work and how dps are generally quite weaker and not as rewarding as anti-air normals. With how these Shoto characters are designed, they’re not quite suited to zoning and not obviously designed to zone to the extent that characters such as Athena are designed.
Although this character could do both actually, I’d say Ash is a pretty effective zoning character since he’s the “Guile” Character. But now he’s fitted with Qcfx2 supers, has a cancelable sweep that’s not a silly Guile double sweep, great hop in jumping normals such as j.A and j.D, easy hitconfirm combos, control space well with his “Sonic Boom”, and could do things such as charge his “Flash Kick” while running and do something like: Run > cr.B x3 xx d_u+B. He’s interesting because he also is able to control the airspace quite well almost to the point that Iori could do so in previous games. Ash has a similar j.B in comparison to Iori and is able to limit grounded and aerial approaches with j.B and j.D. If an opponent tries to approach by landing above Ash’s hop with a full jump or super jump, Ash has a more up forward air to air with j.C. Ash then has a great cr.C and quickly charged “Flash Kicks” to anti-air all the other angles an opponent may try to approach from, also noting that Ash still has a good st.A and Far C. Ash is also able to retreat, approach, and counter poke grounded normals and advances with his sobat attacks quite similarly to Guile; in this case though, both backwards and forwards sobat kicks are done by doing b+B and b+D respectively, giving Ash the time to charge his “Sonic Boom”. Add in the fact he has an easy activation super that juggles the opponent, gives free cancel properties to Ash’s special attacks, and the the ability to reduce charge times to 0 is really scary. He could do this super even off of his normal hitconfirms. Then he’s given the opportunity to use an additional super in this mode that seals the opponent’s command normals, specials, and super for a limited about of time. For zoning and offense, this character really has it well. He is just not as easy or one dimensional in aerial and ground control like K’ is and doesn’t do as much damage as K’ does for the work Ash has to put in.
So yeah Tataki, there are zoning characters in this game. Either they became weaker, or they became stronger due to the ability to rushdown more making them less zoning-like. I’d say the most apparent zoning characters that remain primarily zoning but were given the best buffs are Athena, Kensou, and Ash so far with Joe trailing right behind.
Kinda saddens me to read that but thanks for the very informative response. I learned a lot for it. 
Ash is probably the easiest character in the game. He’s the most like a 3S character. All of his Supers are Double QCF, and his charge time is almost nothing. Anyone good with fundamentals would wreck with Ash.
How bad is the Mai nerfing? I’m hearing it’s Real Bout like.
I honestly have no idea. This is the first on the Mai nerfing. How’s King doing?
nerfed from what? shes never been exceptionally good in any kof and here is no exception. shes not bad by any means, she just lacks some cheap stuff.
king is pretty mediocre too but has really good normals, the best of which probably being far B, which is fast, goes far and leads into so much stuff pressure and combo wise
So that makes her pretty much what I remember. Nothing special, but special. Alright, seems like I didn’t need to worry about her being CvS2 level (Bad, but bad enough to be good). Thanks for the info!
I wonder how the SNKP KOFXIII sprite making division is holding up. They must have been working all this time on completing more sprites/characters for the console release.
They’ve had a lot more time than the gap between KOFXII arcade and console release, so maybe they will add 3 or more characters to the console version instead of just 2? Ahhh if only these sprites were worked on earlier they probably could have completed even more characters.
Maybe if they had double the team working on the sprites, they could probably add almost as many playable characters as KOFXI home version received (which added about 11, not counting bosses or EX Kyo. Well of course those were sprite rips so they were faster to complete. )
found some fan modified sprites someone modified:
Ash Crimson: http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/3360/ashrt.png
Fatal Fury Team: http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/3550/fatal.png
K’ team: http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/8130/95137740.png
Ikari Warriors: http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/8949/ikaril.png
If anything, this iteration of Mai is one of the best that Mai has ever been. The frame advantage after cl.A and far A is almost pretty ridiculous and her ability to frame trap afterwards with cr.C is tremendous. Her cr.C’s range and speed have been improved from the past and is able to hit a lot of normals and special moves. It helps that Mai is able to establish running and walking pressure not only with cl.A and far A but now with cr.B as she doesn’t have a slide to overlap her motions as she tries to run and cr.B. Put that together with a great j.CD, j.D, and j.C for air-to-air and limiting ground movement, Mai is able to simply trap opponents from making maneuvers and limits approach. If an opponent even thinks of trying to air to air a hop j.C or something of the like, the opponent will most likely eat an option select air throw while doing so. Also add in the fact that st.B hits all of the crouching cast, Mai can virtually limit all movement within the hop and ground space, counter poke and blockstring pressure, and frustrate the opponent into pure blocking.
Playing this game more against real people, I’d say the true reason why the top tier are top tier or rather popular is due to damage rather than actual tools with the exception of drop kick. I wouldn’t say that drop kick needs to be nerfed though as it adds an interesting dynamic that no other grappler in KOF ever had. It’s just the EX Shoulder Tackles in the corner that actually do the bulk of the damage with little committal to charging, as in it charges easily. Drop Kicks limit the overall good tool set Raiden has for about a good 15 seconds and sets him a part from other grappling characters that have good cross ups or light attack hitconfirms into command throws. In my opinion, Drop Kick into Drop Kick should remain as it is, but no other special move or super should connect after it. Otherwise playing against K’ or Shen Woo is very doable, it’s just their damage outputs are just larger and a bit easier compared to the cast, such as doing Ash Sans Culotte combos into Hyper Drive combos into finishing juggle combos for less reward than doing a million Shen Woo punches.
Speaking of Ash, I wouldn’t say he’s the easiest character in the game. It’s K’ or Shen just due to natural designs of the character. Playing more Shen Woo though, he’s really good because he has everything. Even 98 style cr.B > command throw just like Daimon.
I wouldn’t say King is mediocre, but she does lack damage amongst most of the cast. Also I’ve been testing more zoning strategies in XIII, Tataki. So far it has been working pretty well against people. I’ll try to play against Dune and the other Japanese players coming over to EVO and test my findings against their knowledge and strong fundamentals and see how it rolls. It’s mainly trying to play my style against characters such as solid K’, Kyo, Raiden, etc.
To emphasize again, Mai has some good shit. On a different tangent, I have some dirty shit with Iori right now but I’ll save that for later.
By the way Mai was actually good in 98 og and had tools to actually fight the top tier. Look up Ching Lung playing against Dakou for an example. 02um Mai is quite viable as well and I’d say 02um Mai would be the most fun and have a good diversity of tools and damage output. 98 Mai though actually has better grounded answers to full jumps other than cl.D such as dp+D and even eats Chris’ j.CD alive. It’s just there are other more obvious zoners or easier/gimmicky characters that people would rather play.
Nice observation! Thanks!
Who has acess to this game
People near arcade machine locations.
Thats not what I’ve been hearing
You heard wrong.
Are you saying that people near arcade machine locations don’t have access to the game? That’d be pretty silly.
I heard of people not around arcades having acess to it