Right, so I have a character identity crisis. However, for the past few months I’ve always kept my blanka strong, and I considered him my best character. I was wrong.
I first picked blanka up as soon as I got a te stick, as the first thing I learned to do was to piano jab to fierce elec. And playing with him I thought that I was really good with him as I could get wins against 4500pp players, by simply doing basic stuff like elec pressure (of course I understand that online isn’t serious, I just thought it was a fair indication of skill). However, playing against good people offline, and some really strong players (like stercan hAkan) has really taught me how much I suck. This is why I am so bad
In a match I will often get panicky and my pianoing will not be spot on so I can waste a whole super bar
I jump waaay too much just because blanka is so difficult to AA. When I play as any other character, I get destroyed by good shortcut DPers
I generally act stupid. I will do stuff like hop into ultra when I have the life lead. I don’t know why but blanka brings out my stupidity and recklessness
I picked blanka up when I still hadn’t fully grasped all the fundamentals of the game like patience and footsies, and my blanka play has made me worse, and made me think I am better than I am
I feel like I’m getting RSI from doing electricity
Basically I feel like I should pick a character with fewer options and gimmicks and this a harder time winning matches in order to actually get better.
So I have decided to main T Hawk for a while, as I realise that playing with him, I am much more patient, smarter,
more matchup savvy,have better footsies, and I generally feel that working harder for my wins is a good thing.
So there you have my story. It probably is written horribly and has loads of mistakes, but there you go
Note: I am not saying all blanka players suck like me, just that I feel I should drop him because he warped my sf game when I was still fairly new, and made me rely on opponents not knowing what to do, gimmicks and general stupidity. Also I feel like a blanka community destroyer as I luckily somehow beat LapChi in a mirror match and then sent him a message about how the Canada cup seemed like a gear event, which, in retrospect, must have been really annoying.
Blanka does suck a bit. I really notice this when I get beaten by a ‘better’ Blanka. E.g. It’s not so much skill, it’s more “look, I can really take the piss out of you” and proceed to xx hop like an ADHD nightmare. I hardly ever xx hop out of anything, I think it’s really unsafe, unnecessary and is not what high-end Blanka play is about. I might occasionally xx hop back out of a failed combo to stay safe. But when I come up against a xx hop whore I feel like punching myself in the face for picking up such a stupid character. But I’m left with the resonating thought that maybe, yeah, I should xx hop more… out of every normal that can xx hop. Yeah, that’d be good. For about five minutes.
Imo, there is a special place in hell reserved for people who xx hop online.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is… I hate playing Blanka as a gimmick character and feel that he is strong, very strong, in a spacing/footsies/sensible controlled game. I love those sorts of matches, and showing the strong points of his game. Put me in an eight player Blanka only lobby and I’ll try to always have a strong, chesslike game. Where stupidity is punished and space is controlled. That for me is were Blankas gameplay resides. It’s when the horrible side of the character rears its head, it makes me want to main a more ‘skillful’ character. Like T-hawk… bwahahah, good luck with that btw.
Pianoing electricity is really hard (but possible) to learn unless you are a musician of some sort: the piano/guitar players I know were able to pick it up in no time.
Anything that Blanka does that’s not an electric blockstring is massively unsafe. The days of safe on block balls are over. I was watching Mike Ross play Blanka at the Samsung tournament in Korea and I wanted to cry. Seriously I love you Mike but this is inexcusable.
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This video is a how too for how punishable Blanka’s stuff is if you don’t do it right.
I do actually play instruments - the cello and bassoon. However, even though pianoing may be hard, it tricked me into thinking I could play by just doing electricity block strings etc.
But seriously, blanka is still my best character I just feel that I don’t fully deserve the wins I get with him
I think Mike Ross has a great Honda, but I’m not sure why he sometimes uses Blanka at tourneys because frankly his Blanka is not that good. His Honda has Top 8 Evo potential, where I wouldn’t pick his Blanka to get out of pools. I suppose it’s a game and he wants to experiment? If Blanka was a character with a ton of potential, then I’d understand it, but he is pretty much a mid-tier character. I also sometimes use Honda, mainly because I’ve mastered slide techniques, so that may be why Mike uses Blanka (I think he slides, but same thing).
Blanka wins or at least does way better in pretty much all of Honda’s worst matchups, so it makes perfect sense. Even with his Blanka not being that strong, he’s WAY better off using him against a Chun or Guile.
I would disagree there just because I think there is still such a discrepancy between the skill level of his Blanka and his Honda. If you ever watched that show with Mike and Gootecks, you’ll notice that Mike really isn’t good with other characters (when I say not good, I mean not tourney level). Contrast that against guys like Justin Wong, Daigo, Momochi, Kindevu, etc who have multiple characters they could technically win a tourney with. Mike is real good with Honda though and I suppose that’s all he really needs.
Mike Ross doesn’t have too much trouble with the Guile match up though (can’t really think of any US Chuns). I know he’s played Lamerboi a couple times in tourneys and always/usually comes out on top using Honda and frankly, I don’t think he’d win that match using Blanka. Matchups are mostly relevant at the highest levels of play and Mike doesn’t have a top tier Blanka.
Not yet, but it completely explains why he would want to use the character, which was my point. Plenty of people pick up secondary characters to help with their bad matchups, not sure what’s hard to understand about that.