My problem is I can’t beat Urien and he’s my most encountered character after Guile. You’d think that’d give me more experience but nope, still lose to all his random shit.
Blanka is good. He’s the last character you should worry about regarding balance.
Electricity knockdown > Jungle Hop > elec > cr.MK xx elec is an amazing block string.
That’s insane pressure and Blanka gets in guite easily, great AA, great stun off elec, Trigger 2 is one of the best in the game and people barely use Blanka so very little MU experience.
He does well against Akuma as a bonus.
I have no idea what you people are on about.
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The thing is, before I would’ve been salty as hell by a major losing streak, but now I’m just apathetic about it. My salt levels are so low I’m in danger of contracting hyponatremia. I’ve become jaded about the game.
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I honestly don’t really enjoy playing Blanka in SFV. Apparently Veserius and another long-time Blanka player (I think it was Jerom) feel the same way. As for his viability, I honestly don’t know how good or bad he is, I can’t really gauge where he is going to end up on the tier list. Infiltration and Verloren think he’s bottom tier, Poongko has him at mid tier. Xian has him at low-mid, as do Fuudo, Bonchan and Haitani. I think that’s where he’ll end up.
Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and Makoto ends up like a mini-Abigail.
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After more thinking about it and studying, I realized that myself. It’s part of the match up and I just have to deal with it. Not throwing fireballs at all outside of mid range is like playing someone who wants to be super solid and never jump. Like the non-jumper I was doing them a favor by not making them have to worry about it anymore if they recognized it. I had some close rounds but they mainly came after VT activation. That’s not a reliable strategy for winning any match up though.
Oh yeah and the Laura army I faced yesterday. Man I am still so free to her pressure or mix up. I can never get a read on when the Laura player will command throw or go for a hit confirm. I started getting frustrated and just mashed DP instead.
Funny thing is that I beat a Ultra Diamond Laura by mashing a few times. This guy had already beaten me 4 straight I think. He leaves right after that first game and sends me a message saying I’m really good. I’m like “I think you’re being sarcastic but GG’s anyways”. He messaged me back and insisted that I’m good. Yeah sure.
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Def. Sometimes winning a match is about staying the course even if it means having to take damage. Sometimes you have to trade on buttons or jump ins to keep a life lead or whatever you need to do. Once you show the opponent you are zero risk robot, you give them a roadmap to beat you which you don’t want.
Yeah I suck vs Laura also. Can’t react to command dash grab for shit. I’d have to like play as Laura to ever see any of those. Only thing that’s helped me vs Laura is to just backdash when you think she’s gonna command grab. Puts you in range for jump punish if she whiffs and if she does regular grab you’re still safe.
Lauras that know what they’re doing tend to play around forcing you to jump out of what you think are command grabs, but they really just want to regular throw you so that when you jump they can anti air you before you come down or pursue you on your jump. That’s what her game is built around so jumping out of her grabs is really risky unless you know she’s going to command grab. If your character has a floaty jump you might as well not bother jumping out of Laura’s shit.
Oh and I’m sure he thought you were good.
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Just a thought, but I think I should start using VT2 against Laura. And it has nothing to do with VT2 being better for the match up. It’s the fact that I never use V reversal. I’ve gone over two years never making it apart of my game but I’m finally realizing how necessary it is against Laura(for me anyways), especially when they’re willing to spend meter on EX clap to continue pressure.
With VT2 I can use V-reversal to get her off me and still get a activation. And even if I don’t get a activation because I end up using it more than once at least I don’t allow these Laura’s to get all the damage they keep getting from me because I keep cracking under all that pressure. Besides I do actually like VT2 and think it’s a pretty good VT in general. It’s just that VT1 is so good and kind of makes VT2 irrelevant.
Unfortunately the hardest part of this is trying to work it into my muscle memory. That will definitely not be easy.
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Height restriction on axe kick, minus 8 on block.
Hayate -2 on hit, EX only -1 to make it worth it. On block - 10.
V-Trigger I increases dash speed and range to how it was in SFIV (normal dash sucks).
Command grab locked behind V-Trigger II (which is three bars). Only two grabs per activation. Range is similar to Chun’s normal throw range and it has 10 frames of startup.
Fukiage is in but doesn’t juggle, sucks as an anti-air and can be CCed on recovery so better forget about it.
Chop is an overhead that’s +2 on hit and -7 on block and only combos from CC HP.
Has no reliable AA.
V-Skill works like Alex’s but instead of powering up the next move, Makoto deals additional 100 stun with it. It also takes 180 frames to complete. Also doesn’t build any kind of V-Meter.
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Amazingly, I was telling highland this last night.
Blanka felt pretty natural and obvious to me when I first played him in sf5:
A tricky rushdown character with multiple movement options and moves to keep the opponent guessing about what angle he will attack from. Combine that with electricity and a decent AA normal and he just seems like a character that wants to get in and press random buttons on you and use a move rotation like every other sf5 character.
If there’s a reason why finding a game plan is hard with him, it’s because his game plan will naturall switch up completely depending on his matchup and player he’s playing against, he’s all about move rotation. They think you will cancel int9 this, cancel into that instead (he has a shitload of things he can cancel into) roll, back or forward hop, command grab, electricity, ex electricity, v skill, the world is your random oyster so get in and get random.
A nightmare, but Capcom can do it and go even further. Makoto is too hard to balance, she could be broken or completely shit. I prefer to have Makoto as a starter for SF6 more than an half-assed SFV version of her.
Actually SFV is full of characters who can go full random harder and better than Blanka, so his trick master status is gone. To me he wasn’t scary in SF4, but at least his random power was off the charts there. In SFV I almost feel sorry for him.
For what it’s worth from the Laura side, V-reversals and EX Reversals are important to use to get the Laura player thinking more offensively. And anything you can do to make them second guess, pump the brakes periodically, or outright stop their momentum is going to help.
EX DPs are scary because the penalty is harsh but every one of those you land forces the Laura player to rethink their pressure (huge caveat: assuming the Laura player thinks, which can be a foolish assumption) and it resets the situation back to where she doesn’t want to be. Over longer sets they may be able to sniff out when you’re going to do it but in short sets as a Laura player you sort of have to go with your gut when you think they’ll DP, and even then it usually results in lapsing pressure.
V-reversals to me are worth it because EX Clap is a freebie VR if you want to take it and once again it resets her back to where she doesn’t want to be. It can be a hard choice to give up VT and the comeback factor, but a) you can’t use it if you’re being mauled anyways, and b) resetting to neutral can give you a decent chance to get back into the fight just by forcing the Laura player to get back in or deal with your counter offense. She doesn’t have an EX DP to fall back on and like Akuma she is probably gonna die holding VT1 rather than try to VR.
Good luck vs the bonita brigade!
Also @Evil_Canadian sannku for the BBCTB mechanics tutorial vid. 
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I’m not saying he’s the only one with tricks. Same as ryu isn’t the only one with a fireball. Blanka has tricks and other things as well, like a good poking L ball, plus on block electricity from a low which is unheard of (and only 4 inputs make the execution easy peasy)… etc etc.
I don’t think he’s high tier at all. Feels like a solid mid at first glance, but doesn’t feel particularly low. He will probably get some buffs here and there as is the usual for DLC characters in sf5, get made at low or mid tier then get buffed to mid tier or slightly higher. He feels like a good function if you like his moveset, if you don’t then I don’t see any reason to use him. I hate blanka personally. Probably my least favorite streetfighter character.
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^Never played against El Fuerte.
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Lol, aesthetics and moveset wise I like fuerte waaay more than blanka. My best friend maimed him and we had plenty of fuertes in so cal. Annoying ass character for sure. But atleast he’s not blanka.
I never had huge problems beating blanka in sf4 either though. My dislike for blanka is mostly aesthetics, though I don’t like his moveset much either.
What’s your cfn?
GetTheTables
Tried to keep it unified across the fighting games and forums since I picked this handle for CFN. Makes it easier. 
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Speaking on fighting Laura, I’ve found allot of success just staying outside of her st.HK range and using that as how I establish my ground game. Kolin’s st.HP is a fucking life saver in his match up due it it catching Laura’s trying to fraud their way in after a fireball. Most of the Laura’s I play throw too many game with overhead. I used to fear getting caught low against Laura and now I just block high. I’m like fuck it nigga just do it. I’d rather take as CG then eat that stupid overhead out of fear.
I feel like playing Laura and learning her tendencies can help you get balls of steel. Allot of the shit she does is just scare tactic BS that isn’t even real. That being said I think Kolin beat Laura. Not by a huge amount but I think Kolin handles Laura well.
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I agree with that. From my perspective Kolin has advantage here. Not anything crazy but I think the onus is on Laura to make it work, whereas Kolin can more effectively control the pace of the fight.
Playing Laura more I am gaining a profound appreciation of how shitty her reach is. Kolin has good normals to keep her at arm’s length and her general ability to move around can make it hard to get offense going effectively against her. It is easy to eat a bunch of st.HPs if you aren’t careful.
All that said I find this match to be pretty fun for whatever reason. Might be Stockholm syndrome since everyone here had a Kolin for a minute. 
Now it’s just me.
I’m the last Kolin 