I would be really shocked to see if there were things about Hsien-Ko we don’t know yet. She just doesn’t have many combo extending options.
I don’t play Hsien Ko, so take this with a grain of salt:
Rimouken changed to have an invincible 5 frame start up and 5 frame recovery. Possibly changed to a level 3 with 20-second duration and a 20% damage and speed boost
:l: Anki Hou has increased chance of dizzy items
Anki Hou has increased chance of bombs
:h: Anki Hou has increased chance of regular items
Bombs follow the normal trajectory and, until they hit the ground, deal 0 damage on hit
Dizzy item duration increased slightly
Increased hit stun on Henkyo Ki on grounded opponents.
Last hit of Senpu Bu before it is repeated has block stun reduced just enough that the opponent will leave block stun for 1 frame.
Increased horizontal range on launcher
Increased hit stun on Edoga (:f::h:) against grounded opponents. Reduced pushback on airborne opponents.
St. and cr. :l: made dash cancelable
Increased range on each teleport. Teleports that cross up stop just behind the opponent, similar to Jill’s
Tenraiha recovers when it actually looks like it recovers
Damage scaling minimums for hypers changed from 0.5 to 0.6 (Chireitou may need to only do 5 hits)
Henkyo Ki assist changed to version
Anki Hou assist has reduced start up and recovery
I actually like a lot of your ideas, except for Anki Hou producing items based on strength. It’d be better to just return it to the “3 :l: throws, Akuma statue, dizzy item on or :h:” rule and give bombs a hitbox that deals a miniscule amount of damage and then drops the bomb to the ground.
I’m interested in your idea for Rimoukon. As long as she got buffs in other fields (speed/damage/hitstun), it’d help de-emphasize her assist and place it on her actual gameplay. As a Lv. 3, it probably wouldn’t be as much of a “required gimmick” as it is now either. In VSav, I believe dealt both the red and white damage of a move as red health (though it restricted her moves to her hard punches, but we wouldn’t want that here), so maybe instead of a flat damage increase, it’d cause her to deal unscaled damage or both red and yellow damage as yellow health. As in, the opponent can’t recover any damage they take from Lei Lei while she’s in Dark Force.
I wouldn’t want to make Dark Force a lv3, taking away her godly assist at an early stage. Maybe make a Super Dark Force as well but I don’t really see that happening.
now that I’ve adopted the constant armor playstyle with the morrigan assist I would hate to have it level 3
however if it was it would make things interesting; personally I play her like a phoenix in the sense that as soon as I got
3 meters I’d get her in and armor up hard tag her out now you have the godly assist and even more if shes last she would have
roughly 19 seconds left of armor (:o) the damage and speed boost, and lvl 3 xfactor and because I’d have the morrigan assist I’d make sure if she’s last char left that she’d have another 3 meters to armor back up after the 19 seconds run out that would be scarry
but it wouldn’t prevent her imo from being an assist char but she would also be a pretty decent anchor as well
Yeah, it wouldn’t prevent her from being an assist character. I can imagine the cries of “Nerf now!” And maybe we don’t need any more of that with any character.
All I want is for her to be more mobile. Looking at a character like Dante (great mobility, great on point, great combos, great assists) and then Hsien Ko makes me sad. It’s not like she’s a super deadly mixup character/grappler when she gets in close, so her being so slow doesn’t make sense to me.
I’ve gone through thinking she’s fine, to thinking she needs damage buffs but now I realize her damage is low for a good reason. I’d really the mobility buff though(I don’t know why yet she’s so slow) I can’t really see how it would make her too strong, which I’m sure is the reason for the mobility woes but I can’t see it…yet
**omg I totally forgot, after reading killer_jigglypuffs post in that general thread our hits whiffing during combos at like random but frequent times that should be addressed and I don’t think it was meant to be that way either.
kk done now!
The guys are WNF were saying that Capcom purposely made characters with good assists bad, I’m not sure how true that statement is but I’m curious as to what Seth’s take on it is.
I think it’s kind of sad that Haggar can do more damage than Hsien-Ko without any meter, she’d have to use two bars to equal it 
They must have really overestimated how “good” armored Hsien-Ko Senpu-Bu was then if they used that to justify her current state. It’s good, but it’s hardly game breaking, and is definitely not worth the cost of her being viable on point. Besides, there are plenty of other characters with “good” assists that don’t suffer the same crippling issues that she does. You already mentioned Haggar - Tron has suddenly, speedy dashes on both the ground and in the air and certainly has no issues causing damage and building meter. Also, unlike Tron and Haggar, Hsien-Ko is out on the screen for so long during her assist she can be easily blasted with punishing super moves, and she lacks the health those characters have.
Doom also says “HELLO, MORTAL. NOW GROVEL BEFORE ME AND MY HIDDEN MYSSYLEZ. OH, YEAH, AND MY GOOD RANGED GAME AND MIXUPS.”
Seriously though. I think they just didn’t bother to think her through that well. I still think it just went like
Niitsuma: "I like Lei Lei. Put her in."
Dev Team: “Yeah, okay, why not. But how are we going to balance her? She has some unique tools, but she might be overpowered if we give her too much (Editor’s note: puh, I’d like to see the day). Increase her Gong range, make her slower, lower her damage– ah, fuck it, let’s just call it a day and be done with it.”
And she was in.
What if her damage and speed was just bumped up to XF1 levels? Would it put her where she probably should be (hard to test combo damage in training mode, obviously)? It wouldn’t be hard to do. The LL.ND vids made me think of this.
Hsien Ko was obviously one of the last additions to the roster (and I’m not talking about the order they were announced either). It’s obvious not near as much work went into her as say Wesker or Magneto.
God, they really need to give bombs a hitbox, or simply have them explode on impact when they’re tossed. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to use Anki Hou to anti-air my opponent and got a worthless bomb instead of literally ANYTHING else. Then my opponent harmlessly passes through it and I eat shit since Anki Hou has ridiculous recovery. You can’t even super cancel it in desperation since all of her supers lack start-up invincibility.
Also, Hoken Genki needs to drop the opponent closer to Hsien-Ko. I can’t count the number of times following up with Tenrai-Ha has resulted in only a few of the spiked balls actually connecting with the opponent.
I definitely think the she needs a buff, but I don’t see Capcom changing any of her moves that much. More speed would be a godsend though, It would improve her options a lot.
Ugh, they need to do something about her hitstun. You can’t get creative with combos because people literally break out left and right of those things like nothing.
It would be better than nothing, I’m guessing that Hsien might get some buffs if they make a super marvel vs capcom 3. I would also be a little surprised if the dev team honestly thought she could compete with some of the top tier characters.
^honestly, the thing about that is I feel like on point she does pretty good against wolvie, phoenix, and mags (not wesker,ammy,dante though)but you have to open them up about 5 times when they need to twice at the most though, and as a armored assist she can also help get them off as well, thats just my opinion though
Thats a pretty good point.
Random thought that crossed my mind while reading Karst’s idea: What if Dark Force had its invincibility frames at startup back? That would help Hsien-Ko activate Gold and then tag out, but would it make it too easy to do?
I don’t see how it could make a difference for the assist
I mean in the sense that no matter the situation if you want her armored up then you can do it, thats a difference
I think it would have more of an effect on playing her on point because if you’re just going to tag her out
then they can just block and kill the character you tagged in. However with that being the case they’ll just be waiting for the tag so if you aren’t playing to tag her out then they won’t be running away from you so you can start your pressure and look for the high/low or tik throw setup ups