the sakura is all resets mentality is so evo 2k9.
Sakura pretty much has everything now.
-great AA (cr.hp mostly)
-ex.shoryu for really good invinciblity
-safe blockstrings (hurricane kicks)
-crazy damage on hitconfirms
-mix ups from after the hitconfirms
-a way to get pass fireballs (ex.hop jump move)
-easy ultra
-great safejump set ups (j.hp that stuffs even shoryu)
-good walk speed
-good FA
In AE, she only got buffs so she has more than she needs… kind of.
We really can’t deny that she’s being shaped up to a high tier character.
Only problem Sak had in SSF4 (for me) was that her fireball was… still a bit slow. If it’s changed to Gouken like speed, man, she’ll shoot way up there.
For now, I think that Yun has potential to be a high tier character.
But unless we’ve actually let the game be examined for the first 2 months or so, we can’t really say anything true.
PS, go chun =]
You should know the SF crowd by now, people dont jump on the bandwagon until someone else does all the work and shows how a character is better than what was thought.
I’m not really understanding either camps’ desire for someone to very vaguely confirm that she is either underrated or overrated. This isn’t even a phenomenon exclusive to Sakura, but that’s something else to discuss some other time…
Five entire minutes of scanning match up lists and threads shows me a character that is believed to have a ton of 4/5 and 5/5 match ups. Individual tool discussion and situational what ifs in a vacuum are great and have some merit, but match ups are the meat of the story…and hers, based off the data I am seeing, tell a tale of a character that is actually tuned into a range where we all wish all characters sat (well…those of us boring enough to want even match ups). Her worst match ups are slight disadvantages. Her best match ups are even. She could use a slight advantage match up her or there, but she has no blow out matches from either direction.
She only drops in the match up rankings because more characters have higher advantage/disadvantage ratio matches going on. I’m not seeing a character that is clearly going in either direction…and I’m not reading anyone making a good case for her to suddenly shift from where she is sitting (to either back up the low tier pity party or the high tier “no one gets it” scenarios).
Give up the examples of her high advantage/disadvantage match ups and I think your cases might actually gain weight.
If anything, maybe she’s the best balanced character ever…because she is damn close to being balance in the Supa eco-system off the info I am reading.
P.S. OMG I wish the word bandwagon never entered half of SRK’s vocabulary…
This is part of the reason why I don’t ever subscribe heavily to the notion of tiers in the first place. Say a character wins one matchup 9-1 but has a few more 4-6s than a character that goes 5-5 in the same matchups. Which one is the better or worse character? Numbers and hard math, as much as this might sound absurd, shouldn’t be the best measure of this sort of thing. A lot of what wins and loses matches isn’t even something that’s quantifiable on paper and in a vaccum anyway, which further dilleniates the value of tier lists as a whole.
I take Makoto as an example of this. Her matchup board (in Super at least) had a ton of unfavorable matchups spread across the board (and rightfully so on paper). But look at some videos of vryu or other high level Makoto players. Once she gets in that ass and starts fucking your shit up you’ll be thinking anything but “low tier”.
All that being said, I don’t mean to insinuate that tier lists are completely worthless and hold no value in learning what’s what in the game, but the individual matchup scores should have a much heavier emphasis than saying “Oh well Character X is Top Tier”. Well, which characters does he beat? Which ones does he lose to? Go even with? Those are the sorts of questions that should be being asked in my opinion.
That is why there should be a weighted tier list based on character frequency.
And that should be considered more officially in the future.
Honestly i don’t know where she shakes out as a character overall, but from a practical combo capacity Sakura is arguably the hardest hitting character in the game.
I know taking tools in a vacuum is silly, but I think the initial argument that Sak can only jump in or try to reset to get damage in happens to be false, and I think Skatan and Uryo have proven that.
Since when can almost everyone make shoryukens whiff during neutral play?
Smokemaxx: If they start using c.hp I can change the timing of air shunpu to go over it and get free punishment during their recovery.
I tried that and Sosage blasted me for doing so.
But I have some other mechanics added to it now as well, like consideration of overall balance. I’ll see if I can find it somewhere. Just wish that there would be a new matchup chart somewhere. July is long gone now, views should have changed by now.
adon: air jaguars, jumping mk
akuma: d/f mk, hurricane kick, demon flips, air fireball
viper: super jump, flame kicks
etc.
not gonna go thru the whole character list, but saying sakura can make shoryukens whiff is redundant. practically everyone else can also.
Sakura does great damage at close range and has decent ways around fireballs, but so does Dudley. If you compare her to Cammy for example, the slight damage advantage doesn’t make up for other weaknesses.
She has a lot of close range normals, and her fireball and long-range normals are generally not good enough to outpoke most strong characters on the ground. If this gets her knocked down, she has one of the weaker wakeups in the game, vulnerable to safe jumps and often to option selects, and while she can easily confirm blocked EX SRK to FADC, the stronger mixup characters in the game can usually make it whiff.
In the case where she manages to get in and scores a hit, she needs to spend meter on EX Shunpukyaku to get a good mixup (hard knockdown or reset.) It’s not top-class mixup but it’s fairly good. Her blockstrings are somewhat less effective (but not terribly so) against characters with good fast normals because anything that’s not a jab (including LK shunpu) leaves Sakura at neutral or worse.
So right now SSF4 Sakura has some holes that give her trouble in common matchups, but some but not all of those are being patched. Presumably in AE her normal hitboxes and fireball are being improved, and she has improved frame advantage on normals for blockstrings. I think these sound like useful changes, and could make her a better character.
Using poor wakeup as a reason why a character is bad is a really really weak argument.
Guile’s wake up is ass.
Rufus’s wakeup is ass, EX Messiah is 11 frames of startup. I’m not sure why people are still getting hit by it.
EX Bird Kick is bad.
Only good wakeup is Rose U2. If you guess wrong, you’re at neutral; no life lost, no EX meter spent to make safe.
Blocking is still the best wakeup option.
Sure, if you live in a vacuum.
It is harder for a character with good ground pokes to get a knockdown against Guile than against Sakura.
If you think there’s no difference between a character with reversal options and a character who can only block, you are welcome to try crossup mixup against Dee Jay.
im not on either side of this lil debate, but you can link into jab then sweep for hard knockdown w/o meter
Sakura is low tier and will always be low tier where she belongs in the low tier Saikyo team. 
IIRC, jab whiffs after a couple shunpu reps, right? So you lose a decent amount of damage that way.
Either way, I was thinking of the stronger mixup setups after EX shunpu. At the range you’re at after linking to sweep you don’t have as many options to my knowledge.
Dan, Sakura and Blanka for lower tier lol dont know why people just wont accept this
All hits of otoshi are untechable. Link sweep into jab. Link sweep from Ex tatsu. Knockdown from mp and hp shou provide awesome oki, better than what the Ken hp srk provides imo.
Almost all her knockdowns set up ambiguous mixups as well
Guess you never seen lk tatsu loops.
You said it right there you don’t play Seth. J.fp isn’t as great as people made it to be imo and I do play Seth. People can just stuff it with a normal which good players do. Yes it was a good tool but I never really relied on it. I didn’t realize j.fp hurt his rush down oh what will I do. Just play smart and get a knockdown I suppose.