If you got rid of the headbutt’s invincibility to help low tiers, there’s still no reason to get rid of its property to destroy fireballs
If the reason an “OG” player does not like HDR is the easier motions they were never any good at ST to begin with and are more upset about no longer being able to rely on their opponent whiffing hard motions to win matches.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting removing the ability to go through fireballs.
might be helpful if sumo drop stuffs or trades with sweeps
It doesn’t have to be that, I’ve played VF, and I wouldn’t go anywhere near saying he isn’t good.
I think its just ST or SRK elitism. Didn’t Watson speak out against HDR too? Some people prefer one game over the other, and some are more vocal than others. There were some things handled poorly in HDR though.
At least the OGs that hate HDR more or less stay out of the forum. VF is in here every day constantly spouting how horrible HDR is.
Here’s what I’d do to Honda, using his HDR version as a base:
Ochio
- Remove ability to store it
**Super
**- Give back ability to store it
- Make it eat 5 fireballs so it can cancel Ryu and Sims super and beat Akuma’s red fireball
- Make it eat fireballs during startup
- Nerf it’s damage just a tad
**Torpedoes
**- Make LP eat fireballs both during startup and in flight
- Make MP also eat fireballs the same as LP
- *Maybe *tweak MPs speed/range if that makes it too easy to spam
- Remove invulnerability on startup from all versions
- Make all versions hit on frame zero, like Blanka does
- *Maybe make *all torpedoes just slightly less safe on block
**Butt Slams
**- Make LK invulnerable just enough so it can be used on wakeup to go through a fireball
**HHS
**- Make LP steerable like it is in HF/Super/O.Honda
**Normals
**- Give him some/most/all of O.Honda’s normals
**Throws
**- Make his range just slightly less, to remove j.HK -> HK throw loop
I’d make all of those changes, test the shit out of him, and probably find out that half of those changes were too good/bad and go from there. But overall, the idea is to make him play mostly the same, but have a little more mobility and freedom when responding to fireballs, and a little less of a brick wall defense when people get in on him.
So like 95% buffs?
All of this stuff would make him way too good. He’d be able to get in and go 50/50 with shotos no problem, and would utterly destroy everyone else. His wakeup reversal game would be completely beastly with a first frame hit torpedo and further buffed buttslams as well as his ochio.
I like the buffs to his super though. It’s retarded that a super torpedo can’t beat a normal 3 hit special like akuma’s red fireball. What the hell was sirlin thinking on that one? Akuma can spam that shit all day.
Seriously, i don’t think it’s possible to balance honda properly. He’s in a unique situation.There are just too many ramifications across the board to anything you do to him.
Yes, but most of the buffs involve dealing with fireballs. The nerfs deal specifically with people who can’t deal any damage to him once they get in.
How would his wakeup game be beastly? It’s already beastly. Trading invincibility for instant hitting seems like a nerf, not a buff to me. It’s way easier to stuff Blanka on wakeup than Honda. I’m pretty sure my changes would make it easier for characters like Cammy to actually do some damage if she gets in on him. A well spaced and timed j.MP from her would actually be an option. Same thing with everyone else.
As I said in the caveat at the end of my post. It might go haywire. Maybe the buff to LK buttslam isn’t needed. But besides that, I don’t see the problem with his wakeup game.
Yeah, it’s pretty lame.
He’s a tough one, that’s for sure!
Then I vote just taking him out completely 
I think all Honda needs is a better super, one that goes through fireballs on startup, maybe builds faster but does less damage. I don’t think he should be able to store it though. Stored supers are just silly glitches from ST. If he (and Chun) need stored supers so badly, just make them command moves instead.
Instead of nerfing Honda, all the other weak-ass characters should get buffs to deal with him.
First frame hitting Honda headbutts would make him far too much like Blanka. There’s no reason to buff him like that at all either. The better thing to do, as many here have suggested, would be to give the characters who have the biggest problems dealing with fireballs and headbutts more mixup and bait options to actually open the game up more in the way it was intended: engaging the players by reducing the number of things that are mindless. Things like Cammy having a dive kick that could hit HHS, or T.Hawk having a slightly slower alternate dive to bait and come down on opponents who fireball >> SRK zone or headbutt on reaction…man that would be huge for their games, very much in flavor for them, and quite sensible/not ridiculous.
Honda doesn’t need to cancel super fireballs with his own super, nor the ability to store it once again. How does walking up and instantly supering support his defensive flavor? If anything, give the super the ability to destroy a single fireball all the way from startup invincibility. You’d still have to wait for the opponent to open up for it, but there would be a better chance of punishing them for being predictable or sloppy. The move does good damage as-is, and charges very quickly; it really doesn’t need any huge buffs (or nerfs).
Strong headbutt is hardly ever used, though it’s still much faster and travels further than the jab version. Because of this, giving the move the ability to destroy fireballs with the same duration as the jab version at all really would make it mindlessly good against the fireballers. Only on startup instead, though, does a few great things. It opens your opponent to more guessing games. It gets right in your opponent’s face if it doesn’t connect, but the timing on it would be tight so you could in turn be set up, or even just screw up and eat the fireball. It gives him a viable alternative to getting locked into fireball >> sweep range from far away, something he desperately needs, but in a limited and slightly risky package. There will be ranges and timing that would be different than the jab version, giving your opponent more to digest and process than just wondering what speed fireball to throw next while hovering over the roundhouse button. And, again, this wouldn’t change him in the least against nonfireballers, which is very important. Giving him the tight window also fits his patient, defensive flavor very well.
Making his short buttslam pass through fireballs on startup is interesting in theory, but where would it get him? Seems like just another move that would put him out of range from where he really wants to be; it’s no better than the existing HDR jab headbutt, except that it might adversely affect matches against nonfireballers in practice. Making his roundhouse buttslam hit on the way up would still get beat by the better neutral jumping attacks, make him feel more like Blanka, and only really allow him to improve over the characters he already beats.
An observation about Fei Long…Sirlin felt strongly enough about Fei’s CW recovery after the other buffs that he added several frames of recovery time to balance him (as opposed to the mere one or two it would have taken to make his infamous cw >> cl.hp xx rekkas combo impossible). The biggest issue with this is that now, once Fei does commit to the move, he gets pulled into that very same fireball >> sweep trap Honda falls into. My first choice would be to change the recovery on all versions of the move back to ST levels, with only one added recovery frame. You could still get swept, but the window would be much tighter. This would also make it impossible to lock down with his cl.hp xx cw loop since there would always be a reversal frame present.
A backup idea, as a compromise, would be to shuffle the recovery frames around on forward and roundhouse CWs. Take, say, two of his recovery frames from the forward version and make his startup that much longer, and do four for roundhouse. This would allow him to get in and have a better chance of staying there, but only against the slower or more predictable fireballs (unless you’re very far away, which this again would help with). He still has the immunity on the short version, so the faster fireballs still have an answer regardless. He would be a bit more sluggish using CWs to counter air-to-air, but it would still be very possible (though you’d have to be more on-your-toes to react, a great Bruce Lee/Fei Long trait anyway), and the tradeoff would be very worth it. His rekkas are his go-to moves to cover ground fast anyway, so this would also further help to differentiate his movelist.
Alright, since so many people have made fun of my steerable buttslam idea I rethought how I would redo Honda.
Here’s what I came up with. First of all, as people have pointed out, Honda is just completely out of whack in terms of character design. He either rolls on people without a fireball, or get’s rolled on by people with fireballs so he ends up on the extremes with like, 99.90988,.232784984 - 0.2938720981 or 9-9-7.5 match ups. Clearly he just needs a completely new design. That means take away all his old abilities because they didn’t work right to begin with. I really liked my steerable buttflop idea, though so I’m keeping it. But I think it might be too fast if it just when up and forward then down. So to balance it out I’d make up have to jump to one wall before you can attack you opponent. Then, to make things interesting, I’d make it so that you could hit punch to execute a buttflop or an air ochio like move if you’re close enough. Next, I think his headbutt should be change to where it has really slow start up, but it combos. So like, jab does 3 hits, medium does 5 hits, and fierce does 6 hits. It should do mega damage on hit and mega chip on block. And finally, given his slow headbutt, give him a new anti-air. Probably some kind of flash kick or something. Separately, one of the cool things about Honda is that he has decently long normals. So lets make them longer. Not a problem since they can’t really combo into each other so half screen reach is okay! Also make cr. fierce a good half screen anti-air normal (this is important!). Then his super, with his new steerable buttflop-air-ochio-awesome-bomb-of-doom-and-pure-awesome, why not just give him a super-buttflop-air-ochio-awesome-bomb-of-doom-and-pure-awesome (throw version only) where it only uses meter if you actually land the super. Finally, I’m tired of seen a fat man that doesn’t look remotely fit in a fighting tournament. Who is he kidding? Fat men would be able to last a second against fit people like Boxer or DJ. So let’s make him skinner, and to really emphasize his skinniness he has to wear spandex pants and no top. Oh yeah, one more change, take out Claw.
Also, come back to PSN Coth. I miss you. No one is as tolerant of playing me when I forget I’m downloading as you.
I think people will be surprised how little a character needs to drift to throw opponents off. Lemme use this as an example: Pick Ryu and throw a Jab Fireball. Have Honda Jump straight up and use Floating Fierce. Try to sweep him at the proper distance if he didn’t do any floating Fierce. Now let him drift back by hitting Fierce at the height of his Jump: your sweep will miss. And Honda barely moves at all. NOW add on top of that allowing him to drift FORWARD, so if you scoot in to be at the distance you can sweep Honda if he goes back, he’ll hit you with the Butt Slam.
In other words, how I picture it, Honda will not even be able to drift as far as one whole Honda, if that makes any sense. 
Seriously, only like half a Honda is enough to throw things off. The drift only has to be VERY subtle to cause the effects I’m looking for.
And there can’t be any shenanigans associated with it. It’s nothing like Wall Dives and Chun’s DF + Roundhouse because both of those are easily positioned. Vega’s Wall Dive is SUPER steerable and Chun’s DF + Roundhouse can be positioned by Chun merely by walking. If the Ochio puts you at a distance where you cannot even guide the Butt Slam far enough to cause a cross-up shenanigan, there’s NO WAY TO GET TO THAT DISTANCE. That’s the key. The move is a Down Charge. You can’t even walk backwards into position to do the shenanigans like you can with a Blanka Jab Ball into bite. You simply are stuck exactly where you are in order to do the shenanigan. So unless the knock down just happens to magically put you at the PERFECT position, you’ll never get there.
Also, you can’t space it properly to sweep it every time like the HDR Jump Short because it’s not gonna land in the same place every time: the Honda player is choosing where it lands, so you still have to guess.
And I would ONLY do this for the Roundhouse Butt Slam, and none of the other ones. And in case no one understands quite ow I see it, you’d only be able to guide it on its way down.
The only reason I’d make that change is because I don’t like the way the Oicho is currently fixed, moistly because the animation is just weird. Honda bouncing the wrong way looks awkward, and if we keep it like the old way, then he can still do the repeated Oichos in the corner. Throwing them over his head would be how I fixed the multiple Oichos in the corner trap. Outside of turning around to Throw the opponent, it would behave EXACTLY like vanilla ST Oicho.
And Stored Oicho is not fun. Even when I use it, I laugh at how stupid it is. It’s something that should NOT be in the game at all.
My suggestions help them out a TON. Mainly just because you can punish his wake-up like you can against anyone else. That’s the problem. Right now, if you manage to knock down Honda, wake-up Jab Headbutt is 95% of the time the correct decision to make. Changing the Wake-up move to the Butt Slam changes that COMPLETELY, and now you can actually play wake-up games against Honda, making the fight THAT MUCH more manageable.
True, but this is what is causing the problems. The ST community has been severed. And you can tell everyone wants the other half to play “their” version. It just makes a bigger scene and more competition and a stronger community. With people going to one or the other, we just have two halves that are bitter the other half can’t see it their way.
Yeah, trust me, as a combo video maker, the first thing I always do with ideas is to try and use things the WRONG way. When I first heard about the Fake Fireball, my first instinct was to use it as Roman Cancel. When I first heard about Vega’s Fake Wall Dive, my first instinct was to use it as a Run Away Tool. When I first heard of the Fake Slide, my first instinct was to use it as a Dash.
As I said above, only Roundhouse would be guidable and you would barely be able to move it at all. And you can’t position it at all, so it basically becomes almost impossible to use as a shenanigan.
Yeah, I really need to emphasize that by steerable, I really mean BARELY. 
Actually, I was. To me, it’s just not Honda. If we wanna work hard to keep him a tank, then I would also wanna make it so Fireballs beat the Headbutt. That’s Honda. That’s how he’s always been.
- James
Ummmmm, hey scrubasaurus why would I play on PSN when I can get smooth netcode on GGPO. Same wireless connection too, hey look another reason PSN HDR is inferior.
Your words are like searing daggers through my heart, but true love knows no bounds!
Hmmm…can you also show a snapshot of Gief’s hitbox doing a crouching RH? As anyone who’ve played me know I abuse the hell out of HHS like there’s no tomorrow. So here’s my take on it…from playing on both PSN and XBL Gief remix players.
1.) Honda’s Strong/Fierce HHS vs Gief Cr. RH Sweep - As I stated earlier…that this all depends on positioning of Gief and Honda and when Honda chooses to do Strong/Fierce HHS (which advances forward) to push Gief back and keep him at bay. If Handa (as my buddy dbostick calls him) is too close and does the non-jab version of HHS he risk getting SPD, since the forward motion of those HHS pushes Honda into a non-safe zone with Gief. At a range of “slightly past half screen”, if Honda attempts the strong/fierce HHS…a Gief who is anticipating this can do a crouch roundhouse and knock Honda clean from that HHS. Even if it’s mistimed it would at least trade, again speaking from that range.
After playing against solid Gief players, I became convinced that Gief at the right distance and most of all, the right timing can beat that version of HHS. I’ve only seen solid Gief players go for the crouching RH sweep, not all causal Gief player do it because they don’t know or think it will work. An if you post the Gief Hitbox for cr. RH sweep, you’ll see that it has a very capable range of stopping a strong/fierce HHS (starting HHS from slightly past half screen) as if Honda HHS was sliding forward into Gief’s foot.
2.) Honda’s HHS vs Gief’s Fierce Punch at Opening Round - Yeah I will agree with this and if Gief is fast enough can sometiimes get a clean hit from it (but I only seen a clean hit against Honda when he starts with jab HHS). Usually it would be a trade. Funny how the number of Gief players that I’ve encounter rarely do this. Otherwise, if Gief does other attacks at start I want to say 98.9% of the time jab HHS will neutralize any other ground attack (clean) that Gief attempts while trying to move either forward or pokes at startup of round. I agree with the moving back with lariat is also another option for Gief at start if he chooses not to take the rush-in offensive.
How poetic. . . I don’t swing that way though.
I’m flattered that the thought crossed your mind, but I meant your love for HDR.