First: I know this is a lot, but I gave all my reasons for this stuff. There is nothing ridiculously major here, outside of non-armor breaking parries or the vacuum of normal tatsu, most of this stuff has existed for Gouken in previous games. I seriously doubt capcom will remove the armor break from parries so you can ignore that and all you are left with is overhead demon flip, some way to stop Gouken from being punished when he tries to anti air with tatsu, Kongo back to super, two normals improved, and face palm un-nerfed so it can be used in the hit confirm they gave us.
All comments welcome, including the OMG head hurt and you don’t know anything bro! variety. Just make sure you provide a credible counter point when insulting.
**[COLOR=#141414][FONT=Arial]Kongoshin AKA Counter: **In AE Kongoshin has been nerfed pretty heavily. Damage has gone from 180 to 150 on all versions and instead of playing the guessing game with two versions we now have three versions. Furthermore, changes to LP Senkugoshoha (AKA Face Palm) indirectly nerfed this even further as you can only FADC into EX tatsu (3 bars) outside of the opponent flying into the corner for damage, whereas you used to be able to FADC midscreen for a LP palm.
Three versions does not seem to bad except for the fact that none except low function as you would imagine. HP Kongoshin does not parry all air attacks, depending on whether the jump attack is in the mid section or above the shoulders you need to use one of two different Kongoshins… On jump ins. Easiest way to test this is with Fei Long dj.mp and dj.hk. Furthermore, a wrong guess counts as a counterhit.
On the ground we have to worry about protecting and guessing for three zones. We have to guess low (dictator cr.lk), mid (dictator st.mk) and high (dictator st.hk).
On top of the three way guessing game this move still loses to all armor break moves AND reversals (reversals get armor break properties). Nevermind that it still loses to the opponent doing nothing and it cannot be FADCed like a shoryuken unless it has been activated.
Kongoshin was already an iffy move to begin with before AE but now the damage has been nerfed along with our already low chances of success with it.
Please consider moving it back to just high and low counter or remove the ability to be armor broken. There is no need for this move to be able to be armor broken considering all the other guessing going on coupled with the fact it loses to nothing. Let the damage nerf stand.
Senkugoshoha AKA Face Palm: In AE, LP Senku was change to hit directly in front of Gouken with no movement, not to mention the reduction in damage and stun. Gouken players understand the idea behind this move but in reality it is worse then what it replaced. It does allow Gouken users to combo from any move (assuming the person is at point blank range), and it did give the ability to have a 3 frame punish in close st.mk xx LP senku, but it depends upon the opponent being at almost nil distance for that 3 frame punish. It also allows Gouken to go low on an opponents wake up and combo into LP senku but it is mainly just cr.mp or cr.lk xx lp senku. This is less then ideal. It currently has less range then a standing jab.
This is what you removed from Gouken’s game by adding that LP senku: Gouken lost the ability to combo off a Kongoshin FADC LP palm. He lost the ability to break armor in a mid close range without the use of EX (EX tatsu). He lost the ability to combo off anti-air fireballs at close range. He lost a corner combo consisting of EX senku lp. gohadoken > lp senku (when you are out of the corner but opponent has been pushed into it by the EX senku). He lost the ability to deter people from focus dashing through his fireballs with almost zero risk.
Furthermore, with the current LP palm it is IMPOSSIBLE to reliably hit confirm into Senkugoshoha. It completely whiffs in the st.mp > cr.hp xx LP.senku combo. Substituting MP senku or EX senku is a crap shoot at best. They do not always connect and given their negative frames on block you instantly go from being on the offense to being punished. This fact alone makes what should have been Gouken’s biggest buff shaky at best. What was the point of giving Gouken a hit confirm that doesn’t work all the time?
An appropriate change would be to keep LP Senku as is, change MP senku to the LP Senku from previous versions, and to change HP Senku to the MP senku version. The removal of the current HP senku version would have minimal impact on Gouken as it is already too slow to combo and is too slow to be useful in general.
If doing the aforementioned does not sit well with you, please consider the following two changes: Change LP senku to have either a much further extending hitbox or to move it forward (in the same amount of frames it currently has) enough to combo from the st.mp > cr.hp hit confirm. This change though would improve Gouken’s footsies as he would be able to use cr.lk or cr.mp as an effecrtive tool.
Finally, please shave just enough frames off of EX Senku so that it combos from st.mp > cr.hp to make it an effective hit confirm. It will miss often, such as on cross ups. The EX Senku gets blocked. We are not asking for anything drastic, we are just asking that the new tools you gave us perform the way they are supposed to.
**Hyakkishu AKA Demon Flip: **There are only two suggestions here. In Vanilla the Hyakki Gojin (AKA flip kick) used to hit overhead, it would be nice to have this back so that the sweep was actually a threat.
The other suggestion is for Hyakki Goheki (air parry) to not be armor broken so that we can apply pressure on the opponents wakeup. Kick and throw and sweep would lose to a reversal but parry would beat a single hit reversal. The parry would still lose to blocking and be throwable when we land as well.
Tatsumaki Gorasen (AKA Hurricane kick): Please allow this to hit low. As it currently stands, it only hits high. The normal versions of this move are for the most part almost useless outside of an EX Senku (dash palm) combo.
The negatives of this move: slow start up (7/10/13 frame start up on regular tatsus), does not hit crouch attacking characters, throwable, zero invincibility, can drop characters VERY EASILY out of the hits, THIRD longest recovery in the GAME (including all Ultras and supers). Only Viper Ultra 1 and Juri Ultra 2 have more recovery. Juri Ultra 2 only has 1 extra frame of recovery than then HK tatsu. Due to the way characters reel when hit, this will often miss in ground combos opening you up for max punishment.
Hitting low would solve the whiffing in ground combos, however this might be deemed to strong or that this was never the intended use for this move.
If we cannot make it hit low, can we please make this either suck the opponent in like the current EX tatsu does OR make it a hard knockdown so that when an opponent falls out we are not at the mercy of the opponent OR change the recovery on this move.
Remember this move has 0 invincibility, is throwable, hittable, slow start up, ridiculous recovery, can drop opponents, whiffs on crouchers, whiffs on some people reeling for hard hits…
Please at least make it semi-usable as anti air by giving it hard knockdown (you go flying across the screen so no way to take advantage of it and it prevents a max punish if you fall out of it) or make it suck them in like EX tatsu.
Make the air LK version one hit and land with 6 frames of recovery. Two more frames then a standard jump attack.
Normals:
Crouching LK/Standing far LK/Crouching LP: Make one of these three frames. This would allow for Gouken to have a hit confirm off of light attacks. The only move fast enough to connect would be LP senku (dash palm) or tatsu. As it stands now, the opponent would need to be standing or the tatsu would miss, and if LP Senku is not changed it would whiff anyway because of its amazing poor range.
crouch MP: +7 on hit. This would allow for a fireball to combo. There are too many situations where an opponent can be punished by this 5 frame move but take no other damage. The fireball will never combo because of the low hitstun combined with slow start up of the fireball. Max range cr.mp tatsu whiffs, and no version of senkugoshoha will combo because of distance or speed. This would also allow us to combo sweep afterwards.
**Denjin Hadouken: ** there are so many things you can do here to make this better. Change to unblockable grey damage (almost every character has a way around fireballs with one bar) or change it to allow a juggle off an air hit. As it currently stands the damage is terrible and it is nigh impossible to land on a standing opponent outside of a focus crumple. That’s two hits for the FA and two hits for the not even remotely fully charged Ultra in damage scaling before you can combo off the wall bounce. Remove the “charge” portion and just have it be “full strength” when used. This is not third strike where you can parry so that releasing it later might throw someone off or something. So many things… it just needs one of these. Even if it caused dizzy (if it came out at full strength) it is at a minimum of two on the combo scale already. Realisitcally this won’t be starting out at anythign less then 4 on the combo scaling counter (FA or HP XX Ex Palm)
Why the changes?
Gouken has no way to open people up for damage and instead relies on a mixture of mediocre zoning and punishing BIG mistakes all while relying heavily on meter for EX tatsu and EX kongo. By big mistakes I mean things like a HP Shoryu with no FADC. Gouken can only produce a big punish when he is point blank with the opponent (st.mp/st.cl.hp/cr.hp not at max range), which, as you fight players with higher and higher skill levels, becomes increasingly rare. It leaves Gouken with just mediocre zoning and terrible wake up.
The changes to Tatsu ensure that Gouken does not get punished for successfully anti-airing and or will allow him to punish mistakes on the ground, while at the same time not affecting his wake up options, which are close to nil anyway.
The senkugoshoha changes allow him better footsies (with LP palm) and to combo from his hit confirm.
Kongoshin changes are just plain needed considering all the nerfs they have undergone along with their obvious downside before AE. Capcom has had unbreakable counters in previous games (Geese CvS2, Eagle technically in CvS2, and Karin). These changes minimally improve his wake up game as he was never considered to have strong wake up in previous installments and it wasn’t because people were armor breaking him on wake up.
The change to overhead dive kick and air parry keep with the theme of predicting your opponent and allowing for a tiny bit of mix up to enter Goukens game to open people up.
Change to Ultra 2 gives Gouken players a decision to actually make at the Ultra select screen.
The changes to the normals allow Gouken to punish more then just point blank huge mistakes. It will allow for mediocre punishments on mediocre mistakes.
These changes would bring him up in the tiers to upper mid I would guess if not upper/top in this version of Street Fighter 4, but we are trying to make the ass characters competitive without nerfing the top tiers right? I feel like these would help accomplish that. It would help condense the tiers into all A and B.
It would leave gouken as a better zoning character with crappy wakeup, a “read and react defense” and with an improved ability to punish medium mistakes (as opposed to the almost zero ability he has now).
Really all that is being asked for outside of the change to normals is just a ‘smoothing” of the rough edges on this character. A polish if you will. Nothing drastic, just making his moves work like they should for the most part.[/COLOR][/FONT]