I played some USF4 at Hypespotting in Glasgow this weekend - no Decapre but supposedly a recent build (though Dawgtanian mentioned when we were talking about Poison that they’d already changed some stuff since this build e.g. Poison’s sweep was cancellable in this build but that’s been removed). Andreas was there too so I’d assume he tried it out as well. I heard FSP was around also.
It felt like it was really tricky to connect a light messiah kick as a juggle after j.HK air-to-air and I couldn’t get the LK ender afterwards, but the first hit it did work in some situations (disclaimer: I suck). Not really sure how useful that will turn out to be unless I’m missing something obvious, or unless it allows extra stuff in the corner or whatever. I’m an idiot, though, so I totally forgot to try it after target combo or far st.HK. Now I think about it that would have been the first thing to try! Sorry.
far st.MP with a buffered EX tornado seems worth having against characters where far st.MP is an okay poke, and at the end of the jab string linking to st.MP it gives you a slightly better situation than resetting to neutral immediately.
I didn’t get to try cancelling far st.MP into super at the end of that string to see if it reached either, sorry (patch notes say the super’s reach has been improved). We were playing winner stays on and I was too delighted with EX messiah not going over people to be saving the meter!
I was convinced before trying it out that wultra would be a bit of a dud for Rufus, but having played some matches I’m interested to see how it ends up working against characters with airborne mixups. I played a bunch of games against C Viper and it seemed nice to have as a deterrent against some of her stuff - maybe those characters will just figure out ways to beat it but for now then U2 hitting for all hits against a delayed burn kick felt like a nice option to have.
Target combo is really easy to punish now on block. Dawgtanian just did whatever Gen BnB he felt like with seemingly no worries about timing. If you’re a scrub like me then start working on confirming it now so you’re ready
Damage nerfs on throw and ultra were noticeable after a few matches - my friend’s C. Viper kept surviving for one more wakeup than used to be the case which was annoying.
I think that’s about it from me - a few interesting things but nothing toooo devastating and nothing that seems likely to dramatically improve him. If anyone else has tried any of the stuff I missed or spotted anything else, let us know!
I never knew before, but I found out this weekend that LK messiah kick can actually connect off some airborne combos already if you land a counter-hit - if you can land one hit of j.HK high enough (pretty much the same timing as if you were looking to get a second j.HK), you can juggle with a LK messiah kick and the LK ender, and FADC into ultra if you want. For two bars it does about 12 points more damage than just doing another j.HK into ultra… You can do it off a far st.HK in the corner too with tight timing, but again it’s a lot of bars compared to just doing a fragrance palm!
I guess that’s been there since the first game and I just don’t pay attention
(tested against Gouken and Yang so I’m assuming it always works).
**Rufus
**
• Far Standing MP now Special-, EX Focus-, EX Red Focus- and Super Combo-cancellable
• Far Standing MK active frames increased by 1 frame (1F → 2F)
• Close Standing HP hitbox expanded downward
• Target Combo (LK → HK near the opponent) disadvantage on block increased by 3 frames (-5F → -8F)
• Messiah Kick LK follow-up can now be used in air combos
• Messiah Kick MK follow-up recovery increased by 3 frames (19F → 22F)
• Messiah Kick HK follow-up recovery increased 2 frames (17F → 19F)
• EX Messiah Kick less likely to cross over even when hitting low-state opponents; invincibility time reduced by 3 frames (16F → 13F); all hits connect against airborne opponents; floats opponents differently on hit
• Spectacle Romance (Super Combo) 2nd hit hitbox expanded to the tip of the fist
• Space Opera Symphony (UC1) damage reduced by 40 (460 → 420)
• Big Bang Typhoon (UC2) damage reduced by 60 (420 → 360); knock back on air hit adjusted
Some of these changes seem very interesting. For example, all hits of EX Messiah kick connecting is a god send (pun very much intended).
Also, the forward throw change is gone, does that mean they got it back to normal? Can someone confirm this with Combofiend?
I hope to god this is true, fuck blankas hitbox lol. I don’t see what else they would change the hitbox on it for so I don’t think its a stretch to hope for it
j.hk, messiah juggle fadc ultra = a bit more damage than just doing j.hk into ultra (with wultra it’s 411 vs 348), but costs two bars and I think it’s possible to whiff the messiah with certain spacing.
j.hk, messiah juggle is 218 damage (j.hk into ex snake strike is 300, j.hk into regular snake strike is 170). It also leaves you slightly closer, and you can opt to do something other than the lk ender and still get 170 damage and probably even better positioning in some situations.
divekick, st.lk, st.hp RFC ultra does slightly more damage than dive, st.lk, st.hp xx ex GT FADC target combo, ultra (for wultras it’s 383 vs 374)
ex messiah doesn’t seem to go over cammy even when she’s mashing cr.lk on your wakeup, so I guess it’s totally fixed?
far st.mp being super-cancellable seems useless because of the super’s range. of course cancelling it into ex tornado still seems really useful.
did I mention the BnB works on crouching Blanka? If anyone wants to fight, you’ll find me in the lobby marked “looking for Blanka players”…
From a few hours of play today I gotta say I feel like rufus is pretty much intact. Cant see him moving too drastically from sitting comfortably around the top of the mid tier.
Here are some things of note
st.mp being special cancellable is pretty nice. Doesn’t whiff on as many characters like his cr.mk. Cancelling into super doesnt seem very viable at this point, whiffs unless you use heavy version and even then idk. gotta experiment a lil more with it.
Ultra II is really good. Raw damage is not incredible but its use as a deterrent should not be overlooked. Being able to AA or anti fireball for 300+ damage is huge. Hits very consistently from my experience so far, only had 1 thawk fall out of it when i tried to use it to counter a late crossover.
Double ultra seems really useful at this point. Damage scaling is definitely noticeable, but damage from U2 is almost always unscaled so its still useful as an AA/deterrent, and just having the U1 if you need to finish the round or get the setup afterwords you’re set.
Speaking of the note above the U1 nerf is not quite as devastating as i thought it would be. Definitely noticeable, had a few times where it would have killed in 2012 but i had to do 1 more setup. This being said one of the biggest strengths of the ultra lies in the mixup afterwords imo. Many times i used it solely to get this mixup rather than close the round, won me quite a few games still.
Rufus’s bnb whiffs on poison, much like blanka you have to use st.mp into galactic tornado instead of st.hp.
st.mk buff is noticeable, feels awesome.
-Red focus could help rufus’s wakeup but could also hurt him if used against divekicks maybe. seems like a very powerful mechanic so far, raw level 3 red focus into ultra does over 500 damage.
Evil ryu seems like a serious problem. Never thought it was a good matchup for rufus, but id say it’s gotten noticeably worse.
KungFuKing, I think both those are character specific but I’m lazy so will wait for someone else to figure out which characters. Probably the corner one works on the same people that you can link ultra after GT midscreen. The most hits I’ve got from anti-air ex messiah is four, against Dan’s late LK dankicks, and in most cases you either seem to get just the opening few hits OR the last hit in the same situations you were always able to get it in AE. Still if it helps in a couple of matchups that’s still great. If it works on Yun divekick maybe it will also help against Cammy…
I just got done testing the ex-messiah juggle after HP GT in the corner, the timing is really strict and it only seemed to work on: Balrog, Cammy, DeeJay, Dhalsim and Rose.
anti-air ex messiah into ultra, no fadc required (works on Rufus as per video above)
anti-air ex messiah into fadc ultra (works on Yun divekick as per video above)
target combo into ex messiah into fadc ultra (works on Sagat and Decapre, but not Poison, from my test just now)
And I take back what I said about ex messiah never going over anyone, because ultrachen demonstrated Dhalsim making it go over by sliding on Rufus’ wakeup. Still, it’s definitely a lot better.
Are you sure about this one? Seems like it’s working okay for me. You have to only do one st.LK, though, same as with Ken etc. or the tornado doesn’t combo.
Haha, another new combo for those times you find yourself with four bars to burn and nothing to spend them on: ex messiah FADC ex messiah. Tested on Rose and Sagat. 234 damage.
@alistarr* Im pretty sure about this. Didn’t do extensive tests on it in training mode though so you probably know better than I (I could never get it to work). Ive played a bunch of in game poison’s and ive tried it a bunch and it hasnt worked. The distance for it to work must just be iffy with her hitbox, im sure it’s doable but its unreliable enough for me at this point to just go with the mp just to be safe. I’ll try it some more in training later, thx for the heads up!!
Also I think i underestimated the strength of his mp cancel into ex galactic tornado. What ive found is that Getting a knockdown is almost always worth the bar, even if the damage is pretty mediocre.
That’s weird. Maybe it’s because I’m just doing it on a crouching/standing dummy in training mode and you’re actually hitting limbs she’s stuck out and that’s leaving you further away. Interesting. I’ll watch out for it when I visit my friend later and inevitably get murdered by his day 2 Poison
