I don’t have time to address all the topics, but I’ll quickly mention about this one.
Hwa doesn’t need meter to be scary by any means. He actually is pretty damn good on point. Most people know about all the things he can do while drunk, but regular Hwa still has a lot of tools to watch out for. He has probably one of the most annoy sets of normals in the game. Between s.A, slide, s.CD, s.D, etc. his set of normals is obnoxious and also converts easily into massive damage. His buttons even give Kim troubles. He’s also got a ton of shenanigans
I’ve found when playing Hwa point that instead of getting drunk in the 1st round just play it straight and then if you win the 1st round you can choose to HD (His 2 bar does an easy 80%) or activate drunk mode.
Any thoughts about the three tier lists for KOF posted here? My initial reactions:
Japanese list
They love themselves some Iori! Very surprised to see EX Iori rated above Karate and Kim, and even more surprised to see claw Iori in the top 4, above Shen.
I still think XIII Kyo and Hwa are overrated.
This is a very conservative list.
Anchor list
LOL@ the shoutout to Ash. Not saying I disagree, but I found that interesting.
Surprised to see Benimaru and Takuma absent from the higher tiers. Yuri should be at least in the B tier as well.
Reynald list
Wow @ Yuri in the top 4. Can’t say I agree with that.
Also can’t believe he thinks claw Iori and Shen are in D tier! And Vice too? That’s just nuts to me.
I’m not surprised at Iori being rated so high. You can’t be a complete bully with his neutral game necessarily, but his meterless game is monstrous. Everything into rekkas, rekkas into great oki into more rekkas. Both corner carry AND damage and amazing buttons. And if you have the infinite down it gets worse. He’s basically made to OCV teams.
Karate is pretty amazing too and has a bunch of free supers like Claw does with dp~break, but his meterless game still isn’t up to Iori’s standard. It’s absolutely rock solid, but it isn’t insane the way Iori’s is.
Not saying EX Iori isn’t all that, he’s for sure top tier. And that’s fine if you want to have him as the best character in the game, that’s a separate argument (I for sure rate him behind Karate and Kim). But I don’t agree that he’s a full tier higher than Karate and Kim. That’s what I found surprising.
EX Iori is more versatile than Karate and Kim, and probably has the best oki in the game. However, overall his normals are worse than both (especially in the air), and his damage is worse as well. He is the only one of the three with an infinite, but the infinite is not dominating the game by any means, and remains a risky thing to burn resources for.
I don’t even know that his meterless game is better than Karate and Kim, who don’t really need meter to execute their gameplans. (especially Kim, who gets hard knockdowns all day regardless of meter) The difference is that Karate and Kim get even better with meter, while EX Iori’s damage potential doesn’t get the same boost.
A good EX Iori is so difficult for me to pressure, that dude has like every tool on the planet for no reason. I feel like it is that completeness and versatility that puts him over the edge, he can literally play any position well and he’s always a threat. I also find him to be much scarier than say a Kim because Kim is pretty simplistic and easy to read, he has stupid stuff but it isn’t anything that will make you be like “why I die?”.
Senor Karate is also getting figured out, people know how to deal with him now. Chin is the next big project.
I feel like Hwa Jai is like the C.Viper (from UMVC3) of this game. Very good character but nobody plays him really, I wonder why.
Iori’s air normals go toe to toe with Kim and Karate’s, but they are harder to use. Kim and Mr.K can abuse the same normal for multiple situations while Iori has to press his normals based on what the opponent is doing.
And I’ll say point Iori is probably one of the best points in the game. He is so meter efficient and none of his tools absolutely need meter to be scary.
You can just drop the “probably” there, I think, as well as “one of the”. He’s got all the tools, the quality of his buttons is amazing, everything leads to rekkas ie. top notch damage, good corner carry and usable knockdowns on an oki monster, and you don’t have to choose like, say, AE Akuma has to. And that’s all without the infinite.
There’s a lot of talk about EX Iori’s buttons being so great, but I’m really not seeing it. On the ground, the only thing that stands out is s.D, which is nice, but not nearly as good as, for example, kim s.B/s.D, Shen s.C, etc. In the air, his normals are good (j.B a2a, j.CD, early j.D, that ambiguous crossup j.C), but they don’t shut down entire jump games the way karate j.CD and kim j.CD do. Most characters have a ton of difficulty dealing with the normals of Karate and Kim, but when I think of what makes EX Iori top tier, it isn’t his normals (which are “only” above-average).
I disagree with Hwa being a strong point character. Hwa on point has to deal with being zoned out by projectile characters, characters that outrange him like Billy and Duo Lon, and Hwa’s pressure/momentum is hard to sustain against solid defense without meter. I agree that Hwa’s ground normals are awesome at midrange, but it’s hard for him to get out of pressure when people get inside (his dp is slow), especially without meter. Also, how does Hwa easily convert his normals to massive damage without meter? I know he has oki dive kick shenanigans, but that’s not the easiest thing to set up, and we aren’t seeing a lot of that being done in high level play.
How do his buttons give Kim problems? He can’t really keep Kim out of the air (his air normals are completely outclassed by Kim), and while his ground poke game is really good, Kim can compete with s.B and s.D.