Translated AE2012 Blanka changes

I think his issues are the following

  • close aa’s have a tendency to whiff, cl.fierce is horrible
  • he has really bad abare, you can’t convert fast footsie hits into damage, and his more damaging footsie normals aren’t very safe other than st.fierce. They are also focus bait. I land a lot of raw cr.mk/st.lp in footsies and thats just not enough damage
  • cannot maintain offensive momentum post combo unless you expend meter or the opponent is cornered, this makes establishing offensive control of the match difficult, and you don’t get a mixup for landing a combo
  • no 3 frame close/crouching normal
  • normals create little blockstun
  • cannot reliably combo into hard knockdown without large investment of bar
  • meter reliant for reversal
  • f.dash is slow, but travels far, this makes the Sagat matchup much harder than it could be with a shorter or faster dash
  • has really weak option selects because of the reliance on charge, meter, and elec input overlapping with slide
  • because of the ball nerf in AE it’s hard for him to force mistakes/reliably chip when you are behind

I still think this was one of his best tools! many say balls sucked anyway, but IMO thats not true!

blanka has no tools to harass somebody “safely” anymore

Yes, i agree with all points you write here.

I was thinking about the elec, on hit, reduce the range where the opponent knockdown and we can do something on his wake up, like in the corner but midscreen, and also reduce the pushback on block for better strings after elec on block, and increase the damages, it should makes Blanka’s elec pressure more consistent & reliable.

I always have struggles with close jump with Blanka, trades with stand HK, too late for neutral jump HP…

Comboing a sweep after a close strong will makes Blanka OP seriously ?

New character that could be unblockabled by blanka during mod tests can still be unblockabled now.

…did they even test this change? or did they just lie about it’s reasoning.

shrug whatevs!

Just had a thought.

After ex ball knockdown fadc
Do the low forward but dont do the 2 in 1 hop
Instead do dash or Command hop when forward recovers
If recovery is too late, lets see if this works with jab

May lead to ambiguous setups that work on the whole cast rather than character specific setups off the cancel mk.
Dont have time to test now but will later

Edited bc ves reminded me im retarded.

Also, from watching stream tonight, and from playing the other day, I think it might be possible that the hop is grounded earlier than AE and received another nerf. Could just be my head playing tricks with me, but it feels like its easier for opponents to punish.

I could be nuts. Don’t ever go to grad school, the loss in brain cells is effectively suicide

i tried if ultra 2 aa after focus crumple finally works on all chars…
it doesn’t… the chars it didn’t work on, still have this “advantange”

zangief, chun-li, the twins, blanka
cody and balrog it’s very very tight, but possible… in my oppinion it’s not worth the risk of failing.

I can punish Akuma’s sweep with U1 on 2012 midscreen, but i can’t on old version, Akuma is too far, U1’s range increased or Akuma’s nerf ??

Too sad the combo jump hk, stand mp, crouch mk, hp ball makes a kd on Boxer only if he’s crouching, and on Seth only if he’s standing… so much weird things about these two fucking first active frames !! Lol.

That sounds new, even at max distance?

No, i only teste at the much closer distance possible, on 2012 the U1 hit Akuma and on old version, no, Akuma is too far! Strange… a friend who plays Akuma tells me the Akuma’s sweep doesn’t changes, so U1’s change ?? Hum…

I test it a lot of time.

Hmm, I’ll do some testing on u1 range. I forgot what it was but I noticed I tagged someone with u1 at a range farther than I expected. There could be some interesting setups to be discovered if that’s the case.

I really think U1’s range has been increased in 2012, just test with Akuma’s sweep, you will notice that.

Something about his U1 does feel a tiny bit different. I’d actually like to see a video comparison of its trajectory now compared to AE.

But if there was an adjustment to its range, maybe it was just to accommodate for the new linkage after overhead because Blanka does seem a fair distance away from an opponent after a charged rockcrusher. Cool to see it might change a few things.

I’ll mess with it, no tournament to train for, so back to pure labwork

Ves, test the U1’s range, on Akuma’s sweep on both versions and tell me if i’m wrong.

I hit a Blanka with u1 after blocking his u1, not unusual but as he recoiled I hit him on the way up, not the usual ‘land on top of’ type hit. Never seen that before.

rockcrusher oh into u1 was possible in ae … i did it a few times after crumple. though, it was a pretty hard link and i don’t know if it even worked on all chars.

as for the sweep from akuma… to land the ultra, akuma has to sweep you close. if he does it from max range, the ultra wiffs.

If something changed in U1 it might have been an adjustment to make sure rockcrusher -> ultra always lands correctly.

I can’t find anything that is different about u1 range. I was testing vs. moves, and I was testing short short short ultra on characters it normally whiffs on and I couldn’t see any improvement.