Quite sure Pandora itself can be an effective anti-air as well now. Pandora into Paul and he can probably do something like EX shredder to Super for good damage.
To be frank my friend, I never found this game fun to watch. I have always found it fun to play, even when Rufus and Raven were wrecking my shit.
I am really liking Paul’s walkspeed, I can play some mean footsies with that down forward hk move now.
So it looks like I’ll be late in checking all the Paul changes for more than 12 hours, depending on what time it comes out. I’ll join in a bit later than the others.
I got to try him a bit at SCR and ill just say a small overview:
He still feels like Paul. What I mean by that is the changes aren’t really monumental to the point of making him feel like a refreshingly new character. However, he got a few needed things, and a couple extras that make him feel like a completed character concept. Whereas stuff like sway felt incomplete in vanilla, now feels a little more purposeful.
So besides his solid AA buffs, he’s still going to be a difficult character to play. He’s still super patient footsie based, as his walk speed wasn’t buffed a huge amount (it’s still pretty risky to try walk up throw,) and his forward dash doesn’t cover to much range. Thankfully he got a 5 frame cr.MP, and his far st.HP being buffed to 12f should make for some interesting footsie shenanigans. I’m thinking it’ll be really interesting to bait people trying to interrupt overhead/bone breaker mix ups.
Mortar doing 130 is super threatening, and now with knock downs being more rewarding for the attacker, it’s definitely his go to move. The only thing I didn’t check was if the new complete airborne status makes it easy to stuff mortar.
Shredder is awesome obviously. Easy AAs into solid damage with cr.MK xx smasher afterwards. A little bit easier to cover your escape too with sway cancel into shredder.
Speaking of sway, H version still seems pretty useless. It got a 50 dmg boost…and is more unsafe. No armor or anything like that. I would like to use but it just seems like a weird specialty zoning move. I love the new M sway though. Still pretty unsafe, as the huge forward movement puts you close enough for links, but also close enough to get you punished for the -7 (I assume it’s still -7.) the crouching attack invulnerability works great.
Raze seems totally stupid now lol. If you read a fireball with raze from any distance the opponent is eating a solid chunk of damage. Also, I didn’t check EX raze, but the notes say that it’s a 15f start up with 17f of complete invulnerability? That’s nuts. That seems monster for a lot of situations.
That’s all I got, can’t wait to play a little Paul in 2013
Thanks man, really interesting to read.
Yeah, Paul seems to stay Paul. 
speaking of raze, I tested the follow up options today (with raw ex raze as starter - subtracted 20 damage since normal version does only 90 damage).
cl.mp, s.mp, c.mk xx smasher is a really tight link, but does the most damage (312)
s.lp, f.mp, cl.hp xx smasher comes second with 303 damage
c.mp, c.mk xx smasher is the easiest and goes with 282
c.hp xx smasher does 266
mp sway is currently +2/-7. the recovery on hit (and presumably block) got buffed by 4 to +6/-3 - and therefor it’s safe against 90%+ of the cast, we can even combo on hit afterwards, and it crushes lows - mp sway could easily become our main tool (and one we can even abuse) during footsie or as block ender to bait c.lp mashers.
Don’t forget you can end most of those Raze Juggles with Shredder instead for tag cancel options.
and also in raze for oki setups. I just noted the best damage option 
I usually presume that if they only mention hit stun in the patch notes then the block stun/advantage is unaffected. But then again they’re so damn inconsistent with their patch notes, so we’ll see.
MP Sway should be a decent enough tool regardless, but if it’s only -3 on block that’s telling a lot of the cast to never throw lows against Paul pressure.
I heavily doubt it’ll be -3 on block (I think it deserves to be safe tho since it still has a start-up of 37f or around there and is not an overhead or anything). Also, if the opponents know Paul match-up, they’ll just do launcher on reaction since MP Sway itself is considered a crouching attack (and HP Sway having 30f start-up lets them do a timed launcher that’ll still block HP Sway). That said, I do agree it would be a decent tool.
One problem I’m seeing so far is that it seems like paul won’t have any safe moves to cancel block string into besides lp sway. Most characters have a safe offensive move they can cancel block strings into but unless they changes mp sway’s frames on block we won’t have one.
Nina doesn’t either. She gets by just fine.
Yeah its not the end of the world but it does mean that paul won’t be doing much chip damage. All those blocked rising uppers from the mishimas can add up man.
I can’t believe you forgot my favorite move, Paul’s mortar punch, it’s even +3 on block.
But yeah besides that he doesn’t has any ‘safe’ way to chip people, but he has his great arsenal of high/low/mid mixups to make up for it 
Dude! I just remember that shit a few minutes ago. I was like ‘damn how could I forget that move, somebodies probably already called me a dumbass on the forums’ lol. But yeah I think the reason I forget it is because I almost never used it in this version. But now that it gives a bound on counter-hit, it will probably become one of paul’s most useful tools.
it remains the same, but the risk / reward got a lot better due to the damage buff and ch bounce. we have to wait to see how the “airborne” - thing will play out, tho.
it’s still slow²³²³ sadly, but in combination with lp sway cancel, can be a decent surprise.
I think going airborne from frame 1 will mean:
- CH causes juggle, so instead of eating CH ground combo -> juggle combo, you eat only juggle combo! Still sucks, but I think risk became a bit smaller. Just a bit.
- Eats throws from frame 1.
I think it got better period. The damage buff is huge as well.
With LK Shredder becoming a real AA, I will probably end up using meter in charge cancel for counter hit on mortar and PS instead of EX Shredder just to AA some good air normals. What I wonder is whether doing LP Sway would let us keep CH properties since LP Sway is not an attacking move.
Every time you post I feel like hitting the lab x)
So I just do it! LP sway (in the current version) does NOT consume the counter hit charge property.
Well Ex Shredder is the only universal reversal, as it hits crouches as well. I don’t think we need it as anti air tho. I’m sure we’ll still have more meter than we really make use off. We need some numbers to see how much damage one meter can actually net to see whether it’s worth spending or saving for reversal, super or tag cancel. I can see using semi-guessed Phoenix Smasher to aim for a counterhit and tag cancel it more often. If nothing changed, you’re still around +9 on block.
I’ll probably also incorporate df.hk more often, in particular after a f.hp, as it’s vastly safer, and the gap is rather slim, so you counter hit almost everything that is not invincible, if they mash in between.
TYVM for testing! It’s good to know that it doesn’t eat up CH.
Well Paul got much, much better in CH department in 2013. Basically almost every tool except for most normals, Shredder and Raze has something special on CH, whether major or minor (far st.HP crumples on standing CH, df+HK string goes into Demolition Man for 192 dmg, f+HP overhead goes into df+HK string into Demolition Man for 222 dmg, f+MP ground bounces, mortar ground bounces, (EX)PS for the damage).
I think Capcom buffed him to make us use him as a character built around CH. Of course, he’s got more going for him, such as a boost combo into cl.st.MP that is not nerfed (+4 on hit/0 on block or something) and a cr.LK that got faster. Like you said, we’ll have to see how all of CHs turned out to be.