The Hsien-Ko wishlist

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
1

First and foremost, Hsien-Ko is one of my favorite characters in the game, despite all of her limitations. I use her on point regularly and have logged many hours in training mode trying to figure out this strange and unique character.

That’s a funny word, unique. Most characters that you may describe as ‘unique’ are such because of certain properties about them that give them some kind of advantage. Amaterasu is unique because of her size and multiple weapon stances. C. Viper is unique due to the incredible comboability of all her special moves, her focus attack and EX attacks. Arthur is unique because of his extreme focus on projectiles, which are all improved by his King’s Armor super. Even Phoenix is unique thanks to her Dark Phoenix mechanic.

Hsien-Ko, on the other hand, is unique because of her limitations. She absolutely cannot be played in the manner that most of the cast is played and be expected to perform. Attempting to play her as such will likely get you destroyed, making you wonder why you bothered to waste the slot. In a game where pretty much everyone can zip across the screen at light speed and dish out absurd damage after landing a single hit, Hsien-Ko has the unique distinction of being both one of the slowest and least damaging characters on the roster.

It’s not all bad though! These severe limitations have provided you, the unfortunate soul who for some reason enjoys playing Hsien-Ko, with the opportunity! to use a character that is truly unique. Her strangeness can be your greatest weapon in a battle with an unwary opponent. But unfortunately, strangeness only goes so far. Most people would agree that Hsien-Ko needs some help to be a viable point character.

If I could put together a wish list of things that I think would improve her, this would be it:

1: Better damage/hitstun scaling
2: Faster air dash
3: Ability to double-jump
4: An OTG command normal that can be used to extend her combos

Her biggest limiting factors in my opinion are her scaling issues and mobility. Hsien-Ko actually has a higher than average Power Rating, sitting at a hefty 65k, which is more than the majority of the cast. The reason why you don’t necessarily see it in action though is due to the severe scaling issues she suffers from her multi-hitting normals. Not just damage, but her hitstun decay seems unusually high, forcing her combos to end pretty early, which further limits her ability to deal damage as well as build her own meter. Last and most frustrating of all is her mobility. Anyone who has played Hsien-Ko in pretty much any of the Vampire Savior games knows that she was MUCH faster, and it doesn’t really make sense that Capcom would go out of their way to slow her down so much in her first Versus debut.

I will continue to play Hsien-Ko because of her uniqueness and the fact that I enjoy the character, but what would you all like to see done to improve her?

2

This topic calls out to me!

So, I agree with your list. It’s the least Capcom could do, and it would help out a ton. There’re a few things I want to add though:
? Pendulum should be cancelable via S. It helped her mobility and mixups a lot in VSav.
? Bombs produced by Anki Hou have a hitbox. This makes them bounce of the opponent for minimal damage before doing their thing instead of harmlessly passing through an approaching opponent.
? Maybe c. :h: becomes an OTG? I mean, she’s rolling her claws on the ground, so why not?
? Increased launcher range

With this stuff, it adds to her complexity without making her just an easier character to play, like in VSav (except for maybe the launcher). I can definitely see the first one happening though. She shouldn’t be unique just because of her rarity, but in her unconventional moveset.

Oh, and get her a new VA please.

How strict is SRK with threads like this? I’m not sure if it’s going to get modded for being “unproductive” like it would on Smogon or something.

3

I’m pretty happy with her tbh but I can join in;

I don’t know how hit scaling works but it really does suck that her combos which don’t have high damage are cut short, with that said though there are ways around that right? But still it shouldn’t require round about ways.

the launcher range is quite annoying, I’d like more range but the attack itself is pretty vertical so they’d have to probably change the attacks trajectory no?

omg, the va needs to be patched out and replaced with something else, this is non-negotiable!

I’d like more range on the command grab actually too, her arms go through half the opponents body and still whiffs

4

I totally forgot about Pendulum being cancelable. It would be a godsend if she could cancel them mid swing. Not only would it help her mix-up game, but wary players could drop out and air block if they suddenly saw they were about to eat a super.

There are a few ways to minimize damage and hitstun scaling, but the main way is to simply avoid using multi-hitting normals in your combos. That means, if at all possible, cutting out her standing Heavy and not using her jumping Heavy, or at least only allowing it to hit once.

Her best combos incorporate her gongs, which are single hits and do 70k, but they are next to impossible to link into combos outside of the corner.

5

Which is a shame, because her multi-hitting attacks have great range, especially j. :h:. It almost seems like a programming error that somehow slipped by. Actually, HK feels like she just slipped past the testing stage entirely.

And yeah, I feel that they got her voice wrong in this game. They got rid of her snippiness while keeping the cute and amount it up, which isn’t as appealing as it used to be.

More stuff I wanted to add:
? Give Tenrai Ha its old screen-wide, Hammerfall/Seismic Hammer-esque earthquake that caused a hard knockdown back.
? Gong reflects all non-beam projectiles. You’d expect stuff like Phoenix’s/Trish’s fireballs and Chris’ grenades to bounce back, but they don’t. The Gong actually reflects very little. It’d be good if it also reflected rapid-fire bullets, but I understand that there are issues with the bullets clashing.

6

-Make anki-hou “random” like it did in VS.
-Air Dash needs a ton more speed. Ground dash a tiny bit more. Keep walking speed slow as all hell.
-Buff the startup, priority and recovery of some of her normals to give her some semblance of the rushdown character she is in VS.
-Cancel pendulum swing via S
-Give her an up attack special that OTG’s similar to Dante’s guns, using her OTG move from VS
-Give her enough time off an air throw or her command throw to OTG assist/or do this new move to combo followup.
-Get rid of randomness from Ten Rai Ha’s spiked balls
-Better midscreen combos
-Have her Dark Force last 10 seconds similar to the other characters buff states.
-Up damage a tiny bit across the board
-lvl 3 command grab hyper

Just in general I want my VS Lei Lei rushdown back. Would gladly sacrifice her assist for it. If half of these pipe dream wishes came true I would not complain if character’s buff states ticked down whenever assist is called.

7

Based on what other’s said that I agree with:
-2.5X the range of the ground dash, divide the startup [vulnerable frames] by 4. Dash speed overall reduced by 25%. If you count the 2.5X range increase with the 25% reduction in it’s overall speed, that’s a net increase of 2.25 X speed since you’re travelling 2.25 X farther net.
-Have her swing special cancel-able by special attack [this will kill the need for an increase in the air dash speed, but I’d do that too…]
-Increase her innate damage output, stun deterioration, and stun effects, to match her current level 1 X factor.
-Bombs having hit-boxes when thrown.
-Dark Force lasts 10 seconds.
-Give her more time to exploit her air throws with deadly OTGs, she can’t OTG off her air throws.
-Make her ducking Hard a knockdown if standing or being juggled, and if knocked down, an OTG.
-Increased range and speed of the command grab.

8

she definitely could use more stun tactics that’s for sure, maybe a command grab or something. I think they did a good job on her starting out with stuff to work with.

9

You can’t ask for a new VA :o That’s incredibly disrespectful to the current VA and the voice casting team. Plus I think she sounds cute, the way she mispronounces stuff :3

10

Yeah, maybe that is disrespectful of me. Anyway, I still stand by some basic buffs. Pendulum canceling would help to add depth to Hsien-Ko, which is missing from her in this game. Some vids of Lei Lei in her more fruitful days for proof:

[media=youtube]V2C96rowet0&feat[/media]…

[media=youtube]S6GB7OJxi2w]YouTube - [Vampire Savior[/media]

[media=youtube]bdkWX0i3l-c&feat]YouTube - [Vampire Savior[/media]…

Sure, it’s a different game, but there isn’t any reason for Hsien-Ko to be slower and less complex than she was in an older, arguably slower (though still fast-paced) game.

11

Watching those videos just reminds me how crucial a cancelable Sepun-Bu is to her game.

12

Wow her air dash is like twice as fast as it is now :frowning:

13

Yeah, VS Lei Lei is weak defensively and made of paper, but had a great rushdown game, which is really nothing like her MvC3 incarnation at all. =/

Also, I’d like to see gong become a qcb motion again so it’s a million times easier to TK.

14

I would’ve liked the input to be a QCB for the same reason, but there’s no changing that now. Maybe the dev team thought that with the new shockwave travel distances, Henkyo Ki would be too spammable with a simpler motion. Who knows. Then again, who knows what the dev team was thinking when they were working with her.

15

WOW the old hsien ko is worlds apart from the new eone. im kinda glad now ive never really played VS and just went with hsien ko because of the character design which i have always loved about capcom games.

i would be seriously jaded if i had gone from this to her gimped version in mvc3. she looks crazy good, even the fact that she keeps momentum from her airdash is gdlk. you think in a game as fast as mvc3 she would be just as fast, if not faster than in VS, no instead they gave her concrete boots.

16

I’ll try to be different and add suggestions to improve less obvious stuffs.

  • Her command normals should do chip damage. I don’t understand how someone like Taskmaster have command normals that deals chip damage, but not Hsien-Ko, who heavily relies on it on her optimal range.

  • Give her forward M more hitstun so it can be linked into an item throw. It works with her forward H, but not with the M version unless I’m somehow doing it wrong.

  • Improve her air grab with something. Hsien-Ko’s air grab can’t be linked with anything at the moment. Either give her enough time to link a Tenraiha or improve the damage of the grab to something like 100K. I believe it only does 70K.

  • Change her beta assist from Gong M into the H version and completely remove her gamma assist into Forward H. If she is indeed meant to be an assist character, then might as well improve the other assists. The improved Gong should help other characters in a zoning war more than the current version and the Forward H is there as an anti air assist with sick range.

17

I remember the days (read: three months ago) when everyone thought Henkyo Ki would be Hsien-Ko’s primo assist. That is, until, it turned out it wasn’t her :h: version. Sigh…

Edoga assist would be solid AA, I think. It’s quick and does pretty good damage. Better than Anki Hou, anyway.

I agree that she needs something to follow up her air throw. I mean, she lands right next to the grounded opponent. Which is why :d::h: would be her normal OTG.

And I didn’t know that about Tasky’s cmd normals. Do anyone else’s do chip? Silly Brooklynite seems like he has everything.

Funny, I chose her in VSav also because I like her design and because I knew she would be a unique character. Then I found out she could be very good and fun to play as, which sealed the deal. I still want to hear what Seth has to say about what the dev team intended with her. Maybe he’ll show her off when he showcases Doom and others (latest interview)?

18

It’s also kinda interesting because Neo_G who’s responsible for the fighting system in Vampire Savior is also the head of MvC3’s system. I only hope in the likely MvC3 revision she sees the same kind of buffs she saw between Vampire Hunter and Savior (useless tier to upper mid), though that always felt like more a change in the game system in VS being faster and more rushdown oriented, not something MvC3 lacks considering people are touting Wolverine as the best character in the game.

19

Is Seth going to say anything on the matter? :rofl:

Probably a case of one of the last characters in so they didn’t have as much time to work on her (but then Sentinel and co. are pretty decent anyways).

20

I think the same thing. But as for Sent, he/it had a legacy to live up to from MvC2, so he/it had to at least be above average. If Ko was in TvC, she might’ve seen improvements here like Zero saw. But there’s no changing the past.

And I didn’t know that about Neo_G. I predict Seth will say one of three things:
“People haven’t discovered her full potential yet” (I hope this is true and if so, help us out a little here and convince us why low health + low damage + low speed and a relative nerf from her last game is a good idea. If not, buffs please.)
“I never saw her as a point character. She was always meant to be an assist character even though I said we wouldn’t do that in this game” (I would smash a table if he said this. Okay, maybe not, but…)
“Oh, I dunno, Niitsuma wanted her in and I just said ‘sure why not?’” (probably partly true)