Thank you LL.ND for testing her. It’s eased my Lei Lei anxiety a bit.
Wow. So they really weren’t kidding about her new items being the highlight. We’ve got to get all 12 people worldwide that play Hsien-Ko to rally for change. Because I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if she doesn’t see any improvement from now till release, I’m going to s.H xx Gamma Crush my desk through my roof.
And just look at the list of buffs Taskmaster, of all people, got in comparison.
If they’re trying to turn her into a zoning character, that is some shonky balancing right there.
And not even a speed boost. Humph. Well, the least we can do is not give up hope.
The jump-cancelable command normals sound useful, but only if she can follow them up afterward (like R-D said above me). Did she indeed feel less floaty? That’d be a plus.
Lame, Capcom must really have something against poor Hsien-ko. Her two cancelable normals sound okay I guess, maybe some cool loop combos will come out of it. But that will only add a slight increase in damage to her bnb’s. I don’t care about them slightly buffing anki hou when you have a nice bomb waiting to screw any zoning strategy you had going. Where the hell are the buffs that actually matter?
That’s the main issue. Hsien-Ko is the only character in the game who has a special that can completely work against them. Imagine if Wesker’s gun would randomly misfire, or Doom’s gauntlets would randomly overheat and damage him. Hell, the only other characters who have situations that are comparable are Deadpool’s teleport which will fail, but you can predict that and the explosion will hit nearby opponents and knock them back as well, so it’s not so bad. Arthur’s super Kings Armor will knock him down when it wears off, but again, you can see that coming and plan appropriately.
Repeating: No one else in the game has a special that goes out of it’s way to screw the user over. The bombs are garbage and make the move not worth using half the time. Fucking fix it.
I barely found out about the jump cancels on the last day of evo and tried a ground bnb, f+h into air MH before my mind went kapoot and couldn’t think of anything fancy to extend it. I’d say it’s a pretty good chance she’ll be able to f+H j.M, air L gong, j.L, j.S land for a small relaunch combo.
Also, air throw is the same. I tried air throw>tenraiha. Doesn’t work.
Maybe they just haven’t really gotten to her yet, and the item change is just her new “big thing.” Most of the other characters seem complete coughTaskandVipercough.
Taskmaster has a nifty charge-stab move that upon hit, uses the same animation you’d get from his counter-attacks. The range on his Shield Skills has also increased.
Viper has… wait for it… a chargable beam, similar to the Z-Buster. The only limitation is that you have to fire it while on the ground.
Two great improvements to two already solid characters. In the meantime, Hsien-Ko can now throw a snowman. Yay!
Snowman would be pretty cool if they just got rid of the bombs. No one should have a special that’s randomly worthless, and unlike Deadpool’s teleport is impossible to predict.
Not that I’m not repeating what everyone here is already saying. It’s just kinda odd that Neo_G or whoever is in charge of her development doesn’t notice this. Guy directed battle design for Vampire Savior for cryin’ out loud, and you’d think him walking around Evo he might notice a fairly significant lack of anyone playing her.
There’s still time left, and obviously we’re all hopeful she’ll get more. I guess it’ll probably be best not to look forward to it though, and try to set expectations as low as possible.
I like the concept of Anki-Hou, I really do. Even with it being random, almost all of the projectiles are useful in their own way. The sharp items deal damage, travel fast and are great for triggering resets on airborne opponents or interrupting wakeup supers. The pots and stars and soon to be introduced statues all dizzy or cause hard knockdowns which you can continue combos from, which is awesome. Unfortunately the new items just seem gimmicky at best.
The stagger effects don’t seem like they would be terribly useful. Stagger lasts for awhile, but not as long as the dizzy effect, and Hsien-Ko is so slow it seems like it would be next to impossible to close distance and combo your opponent. The snowman literally sounds worthless, since it doesn’t actually incapacitate the opponent - if it froze them like Chris’ super, that’d be a different story.
And then, there are the bombs. On the plus side, they put the opponent into an untechable spin, which you can use to start or continue combos. This is actually really, really good. Even in MvC3, when a bomb actually manages to go off and hit your opponent, it’s basically a free combo. It’s just that their lack of a hitbox, however, makes them FUCKING WORTHLESS OMFG WHY CAPGODS WHY?! Just make them explode on impact (ie: if they hit an opponent) when they are tossed! If they don’t connect, they sit on the ground and clock down and can be kicked around until they explode. I don’t see why that should be so difficult.
Until the bombs are fixed, Anki-Hou will continue to be a liability for Hsien-Ko players to use. I don’t care how many aces she has up her sleeve, the presence of those 3 Jokers ruins the move entirely.
People keep saying that Taskmaster shield skills got better range but I don’t think that’s the case. Everyone so far has pointed at the match where the guy does an almost fullscreen shield skills. What he did was forward dash cancel shield skills which results in keeping the dash momentum (something that hsien-ko should have on her pendulum swings…) and sending taskmaster flying like 90% of the screen. Funny enough if you back dash cancel shield skills, it covers like 50% of the normal range and is much slower. Already works in MvC3 and allows silly stuff like connecting fully charged air arrows M into shield skills from the other side of the screen.
Yeah, from what I’ve read, it’s from canceling his dashes. I wonder what the Taskmaster bias is… I know he’s pretty OP in his comics. Is it because he’s marketable? Though I shouldn’t be talking, since I use him occasionally.
So I posted in the UMvC3 Complaint Thread, in the List of Changes Thread, and in the Hsien-Ko Thread on Unity about our, uh, predicament. I figure it’s our best way to be heard. I started a topic on the subject a while back, and it garnered some support (I do remember a surprising amount of people who thought she was perfect as is, but then again, this is Unity we’re talking about here) until it got closed and I was told to post in the Hsien-Ko forum, where my support died. So let’s see what happens now.
So, she didn’t really get a speed increase or have her floatyness removed? That’s pretty sad, but her f.M and f.H being jump cancelable sounds very neat, or even great. That adds a new level for her able apply pressure on someone without the need of Pendulum (Doesn’t mean I don’t want her Pendulum to be cancelable with S), adds a new BnB combo that isn’t a god damn magic series crap, and gives her a move which she will be in a frame advantage. Her f.M now looks like a great poking tool; decent recovery on whiff (or better recovery from the rumored buff), hit is confirmed into a combo or jump canceled on block.
Her receiving more items basically buffed her, just barely at all. She had 3/12 chance to throw out a bomb assuming we don’t take the frame item roulette into consideration, and with 5 new items being confirmed, it’s now 3/17, so she has a smaller chance to throw out a bomb. Shitty buff, but still something. Of course, it’s better to just improve the god damn bombs and fix the problem.
My theory as to why Capcom feels the need to make Hsien Ko so useless is her gold armor. That move is ridiculous, no one can touch her while it’s activated and we all know how crazy powerful she is as an assist with gold armor. Had they given her more speed and damage Hsien Ko would be broken when the gold armor is activated. If that’s the case I strongly support Hsein Ko’s gold armor getting some nerfs in return for big buffs in everything else for her. Just look at Strider; they make his Oroboros a lvl 3 and in return all his specials that were crappy and useless in MvC2 became useful. I wouldn’t mind them making the gold armor a lvl 3.
I don’t know why people keep going back to gold armor being a valid justification for why she sucks so bad. Gold armored Hsien-Ko as an assist is good at best, not great and certainly not overpowered. The assist has a long startup, she’s vulnerable during the whole thing, takes full, unscaled damage, and the hitstun on it is nowhere near the levels of Tron or Haggar. Plus being a character with less than 1mil HP, calling her out against a fullscreen, persistent super (Hail Storm, Hyper Sentinel Force) means she’s dead. You actually have to think when using it - it’s not something you can just mindlessly whip out like Tron or Haggar and count on results.
On point, gold armor is next to useless since literally anyone can run away from Hsien-Ko and the buff only lasts 5 seconds.
If Gold armor was the reason Hsien-Ko was reduced to what she is now, Capcom has grossly overestimated the use of the assist.
Unless you’re playing a team without one of Akuma, Ryu, Storm, Sentinel Dormammu, any other character with a beam/area affect hyper, it stands being punished pretty badly. It’s good against Wolverines, Haggars, Trons and She Hulks, but most teams have that Akuma they can tag in and jump back insta beam, re-dead blue girl assist.
It’s useful as a “get off me” against rushdown, and doubles as something with good hit stun while you’re already in someone’s face. Cold Star and Gustav Fire are both better for one or the other situation though, neither cost meter, and both Amaterasu and Tron are way better on point.
Nevermind the best ways to setup activating her assist are dhc’ing with specific characters like Trish or Storm who have hypers that force your opponent to block long enough to hard tag Lei Lei out.
The assist is good, but hardly great, and way overrated. If they had to let the activation timer tick a second off every time you called the assist I would happily accept that as the price of letting her become the character she was in Vampire Savior speed/mixup wise. Trutfully though, she’d be fine with having both.
That’s the point I am trying to make. They had to allow people to run away from Hsien-Ko for 5 seconds or else the gold armor would be broken. If Hsien Ko had her Darkstalker speed with gold armor it would be like free attacks with just a meter spent.
It wasn’t a problem in vampire savior (and it was a better move overall) where the mobility options aren’t anywhere near as plentiful and it wouldn’t really be an issue here either since you can just… block for all of 5 seconds.
Also, Hsien-Ko is not completely invulnerable to all states while in gold armor. She can still be grabbed or put into a capture state. Spencer, for example, is a great answer to Hsien-Ko because all of his grapple moves still affect her, and Super Skrull’s long range command grabs still work.
