I’ll guess deep hit buff in FA means that hitbox will b extended to the centre of his body. Vega had a weird bs where he couldnt hit Viper’s air BK with FA depending on timing and stuff, possibly because she was too close to him. I think they fixed this.
Vipers damage nerfs won’t mean jack. She still stuns like a truck and her core game is still in tact.
This. Vipers will just need an extra 50/50 BK to kill now. Boohoo :p.
J/k but I think her nerfs were pretty liberal all things considered.
I think people focus way too much on damage and not enough on things like stun, position, and many of the other parts of the game.
Setting up opportunities is more important than getting 40 extra damage.
Likewise having a high stun output means that you get a free combo for two successful combos. One reason Viper is so dangerous is because she not only did so much damage but two solid hits equals stun and the end of the round.
I don’t see the difference honestly. If you’re focusing on setting yourself up for doing the most damage then the stun comes with it no?. Unless i’m just ignorant to the characters with moves/combos where sacrifices in damage can be made for stun or vice versa.
unless they did stealth nerfs to viper’s stun output, she’s still going to be really really good.
also, i’m calling it now: e.ryu AND oni are going to be really good in 2012
You can’t judge whether or not a character is going to be good or bad by just looking at the change list. You have to look at it within the context of the other changes. If a character changes sufficiently enough, there’s a good possibility that the metagame behind certain matchups might change, and the subtle differences may not be obvious from what you see on paper. eg. Besides the damage nerfs, Viper also loses EX Seismo throw invincibility, so now the wakeup game changes vs grapplers, and against chars with good tick throw games. She’ll have to spend more meter now to get out safely, which means she potentially loses 1 or 2 EX Seismos per round, which means less combos (which already do less damage) etc. And if you consider that some of her difficult or even matchups got buffed, it’s actually quite hard to say how she (or most of the other chars) will do in v2012.
IMO Viper will fall some, any nerfs, even if they seem small, have a bigger effect just because so many other chars were buffed.
This will be quite balanced. Easily the best iteration.
I see 2 maybe 3 levels of characters, Top, and Sub-top or mid.
Maybe a low tier if you really want to complain.
AE2012 will almost certainly be the most balanced, in terms of number of tourney viable characters, version of SF4 so far. that’s not to say there won’t end up being 4-5 “best” characters, but there will probably be 10+ that are capable of winning majors, as opposed to the what? 5? in AE.
Thanks for getting it. You have to look at the whole game. I honestly don’t care about the damage nerfs. But the seismo nerfs changes a lot of things,we lose wakeup and mixup options. Most of Viper bad matchups are chars with good health so we do less dmg means more risk. Viper rised to "omg she is so S tier " status after super when AE became a mixup rushdown oriented game. She’s always been good, if you can play her to her max potential, but she gets affected by the whole ecosystem.
Veserius: I don’t live in Japan, I’d rather face Yun here than face a good Honda or Gief. Unless you live over there there are just not that many really great twins. So it becomes a 6-4 winnable fight for Viper.
Those do exist. Sometimes you can use different attacks for better stun.
I’m going to ROLF so hard if ONO decides to make another version of ssf4 ae 2012 1.0… Hahaha.
DCL for $40…
I hope this is the last rebalancing!!
viper isnt going anywhere everyone sorry 
maybe 70-80 damage less for FFF combo ? come on. aint going no where. how many times have you lost to a BK and been like OH MAN if i only had 10 more HP…id only mash quick tech and get hit by another one cause i have no idea how to block
i think that ex siesmo nerf was pretty significant. so is the less dmg across the board. and like the other guys said, charge characters did get buffs, so potentially, she could not be top 3 or whatever.
still plenty good tho
Gief is a tough match if you arent good with seismo zoning.
honda is gonna be retarded
blanka is gonna be the same / slightly better cause of no unblockables
yun/yang is gonna be fray
guile is gonna be the same
balrog will be the same, i mean how often do you get hit by head butt raw?
fei will be doing less damage
i dunno her bad matchups from AE arent going to be overall getting THAT much worse. i dont see any characters all of a sudden becoming a bad matchup cause of their changes either.
Blanka will probably be harder for Viper because he’s not free in the corner any more. She’ll have to win mid-screen now. He didn’t really need the unblockable to beat her.
But even so, with the whole cast getting buffed even if she (or whoever) is able to play in the same way, it could just mean that relative to everyone else she might get worse. It’s easy to which characters are going to be good. Regardless of the damage and EX Seismo nerfs, Viper’s still a good character. But in the grand scheme of things is she going to be better than Sagat, Dicatator, or whoever (or vice versa)? Far too early to say.
Hard to say who will be top 5, I am guessing Eryu, Oni, since they werent even fully discovered and got more buffs, and Cody just because he is already pretty good, and nothing but bufftown U.S.A. for him.
Viper isn’t going anywhere. People need to understand her damge wasn’t what made her dangerous. The seismo nerf was the worst ine an even then it wasn’t terrible.
I think most people understand that, but when you take a hit and others get buffs, the effect is doubled. Its hard to say where she will go, but safer to say she is going down at least a bit rather than not going anywhere with respect to everyone else. I dont know how much all her worse matchups got buffed, but that would matter some too. She sure is a pain for Guile, but Blanka handles her.