I still think he’s really good, but also really bad.
His setplay doesn’t seem to be stuck behind a weirdo executuion wall like Urien and he has a decent fuck neutral move in his v skill. Good AA. And has a low that is safe and confirms into an HKD.
His only real weakness is his HP and his no range pokes. The no range pokes means something, but once you got his setplay down it means less since any oki can turn the tides which makes all his moves even better since they have the bigger threat.
But at the end of the day he isn’t a fundamental character and will have volatility to his results based on how well he’s guessing. This is the same thing that happened with sf4 ibuki.
The dice only roll in your favor so much, but the fundamental is always not in your favor.
This means you can take matches from stronger opponents, but you will always also lose matches that you could have won.
A good character for people like myself that want to abuse cheap shit and not have to deal wit( every interaction being entirely based on fundamental skill, and instead the psychology of putting an opponent into an unfavourable position and seeing how they deal with that.
Gs jab is NOT broken. Cody’s jab buffer game is about the same. He’s getting mad that the jab buffer leads into big damage and carry, the jab itself is fine.
Also, this matchup is horrible. If Sim Cody is 7-3, I think this is too.
Just posting Bryan F’s malarky. The character bans are ass. Its like dumb MOBA shit but dumber. On the plus side, its hilarious seeing people ban the wrong characters.
iDom’s team banned Bison and let Chakotay keep Mika. Why? Why are you letting the most dangerous dude keep his most dangerous character?
It’s funny, I watched this match from CFN. He fights a GM Sim before this and it’s even worse. The Sim player sits in neutral hitting buttons and Poifuru can’t get in at all, EX zonk was getting stuffed. He lost 2-0, then got 2-0’d by this Fang player and went straight to battle lounge.
Yeah those match ups seem near impossible for him. I attribute a lot of the original antifireball tools present within the game to FANGs inclusion, because this is what happens when you have nothing to bypass his space denial. He becomes insanely strong.
From what I saw Brian is just getting outplayed. He’s not messing with his own spacing enough and he’s not throwing in enough jab dashes because he’s too afraid of spacing then wrong.
Then on the ground he’s getting insanely read and outguessed. Gustavo’s G neutral is literally jab buffers/walk up jab. Then st.hp, then fireballs. He uses jabs and jab buffers when he thinks Brian will overextend or stay still. He uses st.hp when he thinks Brian will use his own st.hp, he uses fb when Brian is at a distance and threatening jab dash.
Brian at the very bottom of it isn’t losing just to G’s jab, he’s losing to the neutral mixup of G’s jab and G’s st.hp
Kage is actually to fair, he has set play but its nothing grimy.
IMO VT2 is essential in kage even being anything pass low mid tier.
A kage player has to play like he doesn’t care and like a scholar.
But yeah with his life being that low you can lose before you realize what happen. And unlike akuma who can mask his health behind neutral tool’s. Kage doesn’t really get away with that.
Man I finally found a way to play a video game I used to love and that had been region locked in Taiwan and disappeared for 2 days in it.
I noticed missed Dime answering to me and then deleting. I am curious @Dime why delete instead of edit?
Also @Intuitive2011 you did bad, G2A is a shot site that steals game keys and it’s scummy in other way.
You did VERY bad.
Go on a timeout with the smash players
One thing about kage… you don’t need his vt2 for dope setplay.
Off of his lk and MK tatsu>double dash kage is plus on both rises and he’s in their face no matter which rise they do so you can just react to the rising animation and meaty them for free. This gives kage a very nice meaty/shimmy/throw/instant ex tatsu mixup.
In vt2 he gets the same just with more damage since he can combo srk into VT.
Doesn’t mean he’s dope but he has it off of a confirm whereas like Urien can also give up da,age for good oki with his cr.hp into nothing… but who’s realistically gonna do that when there’s so much damage left on the table. Kage isn’t laving much damage on the table when he drops the srk ender outside of having super or v trigger.
Kage is a shoto that almost excels at nothing the other shotos do.
Lacks fireball game (poor neutral)
No scary mid ranged cc/cancelable button like ryu’s solar plexus strike, ken’s st mk or akuma’s cr hp.
No confirmable c mk like ken.
St hk whiffs on crouchers (has no replacement cc unlike akuma).
Fw hp is similar to akuma’s st hp, but is -4 ob, very easy to whiff punish and ender whfifs if the opp is crouching
Shotos have good 4 frames but kage has the second worst.
3 frame is only worth beating strings, used anywhere else it’s +1 ob and on counter hit only goes into a 4 frame. Ryu’s 3 frame counterhit combos into 5 frame, or akuma’s into cr mk (this btw is one frame faster for akuma).
Your 5 and 6 frame punishes are a little bad. Ken’s tc starts in 5 frames and goes into h tatsu. You’ll have to settle with a tatsu ender that does poor damage.
Buttons are stubby as fuck. Ryu’s st mp is atleast +7 oh and lets him use cr mk afterwards. With cr mp only goes into stubby st mp.
IA ex tatsu whiffs on crouchers.
Because you got 900 hp though you get to have a cool few things like great walkspeed. overhead ch ~ cr lp. Stomps. +3 ob 5 frame (great pressure button), Good walkspeed. Or a very fast overhead. Or in the mid range a v skill that pre emptively can be used to punish the opponents (however very punishable if the opponent is ready for it). But it definitely doesnt make up for weaknesses in the neutral.
Not that I want characters to specifically suck but don’t see what Kage brings to the table to merit some buffing. If anything grapplers like Gief, Alex and Laura are the ones in dire need of buffs and which could bring another archetype to the top matches.
Honestly the main reason I even use Kage is because he’s a fair shoto while Ryu doesn’t really feel right. I hate even labbing as Ryu that’s how unpleasant he feels.
This is why Kage is better Evil Ryu gameplay wise because he isn’t redundant and makes other shoto relevant. Plus it gives the illusion of his character being strong to edgy fanbase.
