The thing about Ken imo is that his hit confirms are really strong. St.MK TC, cr.MP, cr.MK and B.MP TC are pretty decent confirms. He got a good VT, very good reversal. Strong oki to an extent. Very good corner carry.
Its just that he kinda have to take risks, his neutral game is decent but not great and he does lack a 3F light. Also apparently Guile destroy him.
He just does seem like a good character for the below top top players level. I can’t see a Ken winning EVO or Capcup or any high profile tournaments alone. Neither can i see anyone out of the top 7 doing that. So overall he is good, just that others are better.
Some of the dumbest humans that walk this Earf play SFV.
You got players with acid trip looking flags re-joining and re-joining an re-joining. You have players that join your lobby, leave then join back. Like how the fuck did you just forget you clicked my name? This isn’t SF4 where it automatically picks your opponent.
SFV itself doesn’t even trigger me, it’s these stupid fucking players.
Chris T is at the point where he just switches to Akuma to deal with Guile. If he didn’t lose bad to Guile he’d overall be not too bad of a character.
He’s definitely playable vs the other top 5. Still has some of the best corner carry in the game which is why I’d rather fight Akuma than Ken. At least Akuma has to work to put you in the corner. Ken any random shit he hits you with can take you into a corner where you’re dealing with hard to see overheads that if you try to preemptively block open you up for lows that will kill you etc.
IMO that’s every game really. Even in games where the less than top 5 are more playable, still should really be playing top 5 if it’s about winning often. Ken is at the point now where outside of counter picking for Guile he’s pretty playable overall. He got a lot of subtle changes that helped his QoL towards 3.5.
There has always been a large enough pool of “good” characters to choose from , just don’t pick the bad ones or the ones that don’t play proper “SFV”, especially the one character that just got butchered
I always enjoy watching high level Laura matches. Not because it’s interesting or whatever but just to see pros getting hit by all the random stuff (raw overhead, command grab after V-Skill dash etc.) that people continue to tell me is apparently ‘super easy to react to’ when playing against her.
I don’t think it’s that simple for some folk. Like Sagat is in and now I’m enjoying it, all of a sudden Leslie pops up with Sagat, then Ryan Hart. Character and style means a lot.
Thing with Sagat is they didn’t SF5 him. He’s pretty much SF4 Sagat.
I know for a fact I could pick Cammy and lay waste to bodies, because I did that in 4 once (also with Cammy), but that’s just not my thing.
Sagat is good tho and just like Guile brings to SFV is own playstyle which is a good thing and makes him fun. Still, the game has more than 1 character and I’m pretty sure that everyone can enjoy more than just 1 playstyle plus playing a “good” character (which doesn’t necessarily mean top 5 or 10, just watch at how “large” that top 10 got with notable players talking about this or that character belonging into the top 10) is rewarding, you invest time and get (good) results.
Personally I think that to enjoy this game you either have to play a character with a very strong playstyle of his own (like Guile and Menat) or go with the flow and do SFV things
I had Sagat’s stHK straight up knock Bison out of his EXDR, it was near the corner so that probably helped too…ill have to run into an other Blanka player to experiment
Ken has problems with Guile, Menat, Rashid and Dictator if we’re basing it off S3 changes if concerning about high to top tier characters. General tldr with Ken cons, dominant normals and characters that can space control him really well by specific means usually meets the criteria to give him problems.
Guile and Menat are practically for the same reasons, their zoning is very oppressive and Ken does not naturally have a ground projectile counter option aside of Jump EX Tatsu (which he won’t be able to land in most cases due to the positioning those two puts him in, a few steps back from St.Roundhouse tip)
Rashid got nerfed, but the problems stems mostly from his normals, as both character’s pressure game was nerfed universally.
Dictator MU was likely even before in S2, but the changes in S3 more or less benefited Dictator the most here as the game universally seemed to skew reward/success % to neutral based actions (excluding certain characters from the top that has utilities that go against the general philosophy).
