I think a better way of looking at things would be instead of analyzing these moves in a vacuum in a points based system you could group each character and observe how their moves allow them to construct a solid and stable gameplan that consistently win and produce results (is this move too situational against most of the cast?). You can then see how much synergy is in the toolset (how well they work together), and how well their strengths make up for weaknesses. And whether their weaknesses is too crippling to their gameplan.
Then you can look at matchups in detail. Most chars dont have terrible matchups outside 2 or 3 matches. So the game is decently balanced in that regard.
When i think about a char that has almost everything i think of akuma. But even akuma has weaknesses. A mid range zone that is lacking and whatever move he has that comes close to filling that gap have high recovery.
Ryu should be perfect but his weaknesses in that if his opponent is standing his combos are not just weaker but also do less damage, combined with stubby and normals that dont cover every situation. This is bad because Ryu’s ultimately a close range heavy damage dealing character for you to play him most effectively.
Daigo seems really interested in playing Zeku, good.
Thanks to Yipes, every time Bison does Scissors Kick, “Moon Boots” is the first thing I think of.
He doesnt have a whole lot of options though. He like fireballs so menat and falke is no option. So outside of learning how to play old zeku he doesnt have a choice. But i think he’ll do well with young zeku if he learns the char. Most of the asian zeku players like unsung play pretty much braindead rushdown. Maybe a different style can get the most out of the character.
Let Daigo have fun.
Sakura is probably a lot better than people are willing to give her credit for.
Get Ninja’d.
Edit: Thank you Capcom for not letting me filter matches to the general geographic area I inhabit.
I think he could make it work with Zeku if he committed to him. Old zeku neutral game is really strong in some match ups. A lot of people felt like he beat Cammy for instance last season but were afraid to just have that opinion openly available for criticism because lol cammy op. And that had little to nothing to do with YZ.
I think about the character like this. If we assume Ryu is good now, OZ neutral is about on par with Ryu, and YZ rushdown is way better than Ryu.
So if Daigo commits to Zeku and really optimized stance management per situation it’d be basically a better version of sfv Ryu
Daigo trying to discover the secret to defeating Bison…
She is, but I think she’ll always have the “why aren’t I playing Akuma instead?” problem.
Because her st.lk is godlike.
For pure fun you could still play sakura instead. And for matchups, sakura probably can give you the edge. And they’re also wildly different characters.
Just food for thought, can akuma charge fireball and get in and play a fireball game at the same time? does he have a ridiculous 4 frame punish; He has a useless 4 frame and a 3 frame that is only as good as sakura’s. Does he have a -2 on block special, an air throw, better forward and back walkspeed, a better 2 bar v trigger, also arguably the better mid range heavy cc button.
Dont get me wrong i agree with you akuma is overall the better character but they’have different strengths. And that might suit some people’s game better.
Sakura has always been a decent character to me even during her bad days, she just strategically/matchup wise fills no roles that Akuma doesn’t. She strategically has no real place in a CPT event compared to Akuma. Like in IV you are just playing her because you like her and she has tools.
Once you get these large rosters in fighting games characters have to start being played on what they strategically add to the game. If Sakura isn’t giving you anything in matchups or meta that Akuma can’t give you (which she doesn’t really) then not much point. She doesn’t have enough outlier neutral tools to be counter pick effective like Chun Li or Menat and doesn’t have anything that clearly outclasses what Akuma is good at.
This is before you add CPT life changing money. CPT just exacerbates the situation where you can’t be playing filler characters other than to be an exhibitionist.
I am pretty sure we will have a lot of common characters in the top 8 in most CPT events when money is on the line, but given how balanced the game feels, we might end up seeing quite a few odd faces in the top 32 and top 16, with a larger variety of characters.
And that will be good enough for me.
If they keep following the line they did for S4 balancing on S4.5, then we might even be able to dream about having a list of characters 10, 12 that are all very viable for the top 8 play in the tournament.
S2 was like that except it was filled with characters everyone hated minus Karin and people still thought Karin was cheap. Gief could count but people liked SnakeEyez and Itabashi’s Gief. Otherwise he was villianized for putting you in blender once he got in and not letting short button neutral characters do what they want.
Hopefully S4 is like that but the characters are slightly more respected lol
I do hope so as well.
S2 CPT events were quite more fun to watch due to diversity, despite people hating on those characters. 
How? That was literally the game at its trash point. It still shit but that was basically the core vision of how shit they wanted this game to be. If you didn’t know SF5 was a bad game, Season 2 more or less let you know the devs were knuckle draggers.
Not going to be much Cody representation on the Pro Tour.
Shazzy doesn’t travel, but people have said they’ll fly him out for a couple events. Hope he attends at least one this year.
Packz doesn’t travel much outside of the country, his sponsor probably doesn’t cover travel costs overseas, and even then - he’ll probably stay on Karin for majority of MUs.
Outside of that, I don’t really know many offline Cody players. He’s in a good spot, but it seems most people are looking for something different, maybe his matchups aren’t too hot for the top tier either.
Stuff like Cody’s situation is likely where the arcade cabs help as well.
There’s a lot of asians that can do work, but an arcade cab will give them an everyday regular platform with streamed events and local tourneys to get exposure off of. That’s pretty much how Pepeday came to life. Was gdlk Fuerte player who came into the Combofiend buffs for the character and his arcade exposure got him kappa sponsorship and then he became basically legendary after.
We’ll see what happens with the Euro, Southeast Asian and Australian people that need that exposure, but any dark horses that need to be brought out the arcade cab should definitely help with in Japan or Korea.
Still think OZ neutral is worse than Ryu, especially after the latter S4 buffs, even if he’s better too. Much depends on the player style, OZ looks like a valuable fit for Daigo, but he’s also good at pressure when he decides to do that.
Hot take: Third Strike and SFV are cut from the same cloth.