Thoughts on Blanka being nerfed again and again and again

Greetings,

Blanka is being nerfed gradually from version to version. Even though he’s not my main, (but i do like to play with him as part of my SF4 team) in the nest version of SSF4 i might as well stop playing him because of all the noobs crying out about him. (Blanka balls, electricity, Unblockable Ultra? (lol…u serious?) Anyways, probably less players will play Blanka now. In high level play, Blanka can be shutdown completely, he doesn’t have damaging combos, damaging punishes, a Ultra that can juggle after a combo, etc… I don’t understand why noobs keep crying about him?

Any thoughts?

My thoughts, Blanka can be shut down because he is a stupid charge character. Besides that hes hard to beat or lose with. Also I don’t see how Blanka has been getting nerfed, hes basically in his most broken form. Mainly because of free chip damage and easy anti cross up with a really good slide attack.

Dunno, doesn’t matter I guess. Command grabs are the cheapest so let Blanka have his BS. There’s being good at being cheap or being good and cheap.

PonderCheapness - Shoryuken Wiki

… Delete the thread somebody.

Sometimes I wish there was still reputation on SRK so we could bury this guy into the ground.

what in the hell. this site should require people to beat a gauntlet of players before you could post… wtf.

Isn’t this a fighting game FAN site? if there was a level you would have to be to post then there would be like 50 srk users

lol maybe less!

I agree that blanka has been nerfed too much BUT I hope that capcom start taking it seriously and start giving a little more tool maybe a little larger window for combo or more damage output
Horizontal roll being closer i didn’t see it but it might even be good if thay do it in a thinked manner

Blanka player are becoming less and less frequent. Even those who played it in vanilla moved to the notorius shoto since shoryuken stop a lot of setup of the game.

That said the blanka ball was still punishable even ON HIT from a lot of character in the cast wich make a lot of combo for the brazilian beast useless

If i must close a full connected difficolt combo (like j.hk,s.mp,c.mk,s.lp,heavy ball) just to see an abel return me more damage with any ultra he had choosen…
IF they decide to nerfed his blanka ball recovery i’m fine if it’s on block but on hit it need to do a lot more stun

Maybe I’m crazy but I think Blanka is actually pretty much the same character that he was in Vanilla, hell he’s probably better with the buffs to jab ball, hop, blocked lvl2 focus, and his normals. Problem is a lot of easier matchups for him in that game got buffed(Fuerte, Claw, Guile) and some other lesser played characters he struggled with already now are more played(Dictator, Abel, Cammy, Fei)

He has more problematic matchups, but is overall a bit more solid, if not quite as explosive with the nerf to U1 damage.

I’d trade ball as his Focus Break for the ability of ball to knock down on hit.

Hell, I’d trade it for a 4 button electricity.

Well we don’t need 4 button electricity. It isn’t a buff, it is making a move easier to do for people who should learn a new technique.

Are you saying that Blanka players should avoid using elec or are you implying that by my want for a 4 input elec that I should learn another way of doing it?

Because the former would be wrong and the later would be an unnecessary assumption about me.

I understand that 4 inputs to elec isn’t a buff to Blanka in the strictest sense of the term, but allowing him to use his best technique, st.lp -> hp.elec xN with a more lenient window certainly is a benefit.

The execution requirement for Blanka doesn’t really change anything. I miss electricity from time to time but the fact is that elec off jabs/shorts is doable, you just have to practice it.

Anyways, all in all Blanka’s in roughly the same place he was in vanilla. More of his matches got significantly better (Sagat, Ryu, Akuma, Zangief), than got significantly worse (Rufus, Vega). However the flip side of this is that important matches that he struggles with (Abel, Cammy, Rufus) became critically important to the meta-game.

He’s basically exactly where he started from. A solid mid-tier character who shuts down scrubs and gets wafflestomped by the most important character class in the game. Which is exactly where we were in vanilla, just he went from losing to shoto/Sagat to losing to team divekick. Such is life, I guess.

–Jay Snyder
Viscant@aol.com

People that don’t play often, don’t know matchups and don’t play at a tourney level aren’t aware of what they lack, so they will always feel entitled to comment on where a character stands in the game as a whole. For the most part, what they think about the character actually describes more about the level of the player, and the level that they’re used to fighting against.

It’s coming from a place of ignorance though, so instead of getting upset by it, I’m glad most of the players who do know, just leave it be.

U1 damage reduction is fine, it scales back with the reduction made to all other ultras. If it was the same, it would be noted as one of the overpowered ultras that slid through the cracks like Elf Spark and Breathless. Blanka hasn’t been nerfed - it’s just that the game around him has changed to an effect. Favourable matchups are easier because his damage output wasn’t scaled back like others, but almost all of his new matchups fall onto the slightly disadvantageous side because all of the new cast (except Hawk) have an instant horizontal traveling move that punishes balls - which makes balls feel like they can never be used, which makes people feel like Blanka was nerfed.

Think outside the ball.

I think It’s more apparent even now than it was in vanilla, that the designers consider Blanka’s balls more for moving around on the screen than actually hitting the opponent. It’s why his rainbow roll doesn’t focus break and why they are nerfing blocked blanka balls in the arcade edition.

I really don’t have a problem with this at all; I think the main purpose of horizontal blanka balls in my mind is for crossups after a knockdown before the opponent rises for opportunities to go into electricity mixups, to break focus attacks and as a sort of advancing guard that encourages the opponent to block and close space. It’s a bummer that you can jab him out of the move so easily, if I were to make any changes to the move, I’d make it so that his vulnerable hitbox is much smaller while doing a horizontal blanka ball, but it would be super easy to punish on block, like an SRK.

This, this so much.

Even with no buffs, if the metagame shifted after AE to make Abel, Cammy, Rufus etc. not as played, Blanka would appear to be much better just because his bad matchups wouldn’t be the common ones.

Would you want all mash moves to be 4 inputs then? I think Capcom wants a little consistency. Honda not missing hands as often against us, or Chun being able to do easier Legs -> sweep?

It’s not really nerfed but just messed up and unbalanced. Is it so damn complicated to make a block Blanka ball punishable and a hit Blanka ball knock the person down?

ps, any charge character can be shut down regardless of how skilled a person is. Or in some cases it could also be full of BS on the other end with long fast range moves which often comes with good priority and or safe. Damn roll and scissor kicks piss me off the most.

there is 0 reason for ball to knockdown. It would actually make Blanka way less interesting of a character.

I don’t know that this paragraph means.

I"ve picked up Blanka a few weeks ago, and i personally believe that he is a strong character. I tend to not use horizontal ball as frequently and tend to do more electricity pressure. also i agree with the above post bout thinking outside of the ball. He has some solid normals i think for poking/counterhit/frametraps. =o.