I had Ken top 12 in 2012 and people thought I was dumb on here.
I don’t really know how he shakes out now though. A lot of what I thought was strong about him isn’t as good now, but he got compensation buffs, and I think overall his footsies are much better.
glitches and poorly designed new chars aside, I think USF4 will shape up to be the most “balanced” version of SF4 yet. Just wish they’d change elena/decapre’s hurtboxes so you can actually combo them 
IMO decapre is a top 10-15 char. Hoping for a few hotfixes with the disk-release, this game only needs a few tweaks to be really good.
I wonder why everyone is placing Poison so low. I haven’t played her I admit, but her toolset looks overall good. Even ignoring the fact her DP is bleh she still has:
Has a slightly below average walk speed
A 17F forward dash farther than shotos
A 22F backdash with only 4F grounded recovery frames and distance almost equal to Rose’s
3F lights
Far reaching pokes
Far reaching CANCELABLE pokes (far MK, crMK, crMP)
A safe way to get in from full screen (EX Love me tender, hits overhead, 22F startup +2F on block 100% invincible to projectiles until recovery starts, does 200 damage and a hard knockdown, and breaks armor.)
An OK focus attack
Great throw damage (forward = 150 damage 150stun. Backward = 140 damage 150stun)
Possibly the 2nd best motion fireball in the game after Gouken
LP Fireball = 15F startup 30F recovery (44F total) does 70 damage, only -3F point blank, causes a free juggle state on air hit, has 3 juggle potential. Active till it leaves screen. Has the 2nd tallest hitbox in the game (0.25, only non-super/ultra fireball that is bigger is Sakura’s level 3 and EX which are 0.3, most are 0.2 or 0.1. Cody’s badstone is 0.2, knife throw is 0.1, dhalsim’s fireball is 0.1)
MP Fireball = 17F startup 27F recovery (43F total) active for 40F, +3F on hit 0F on block point blank. Shares all of the same other properties as LP
HP Fireball = 23F startup, 20F recovery (42F total) active for 40F, +10F on hit +7F on block. 1F slower recovery than Cody’s HP Badstone, same as Guile’s LP Sonic boom, does nearly 50% more damage than either, has more frame advantage than either, faster total frame count than Cody’s LP Badstone.) shares same properties as the others
Can consistently combo out of her F+MP overhead on crouching opponents which is also airborne and goes over lows.
Has an above average damage super (370) with a 2F startup
Has an easy to combo into ultra (u1)
Has solid jumping attacks and air 2 airs (esp her HK)
Is it just her hitboxes aren’t good or something?
bad sweep, terrible dp(it WHIFFED on a safejump), fireball is good but doesn’t have the threat of slow fireball+anti air followup, anti air if finnicky in general and struggles against characters who can change their jump arcs, overhead hits late on crouchers giving you more time to react to it, and I don’t actually feel like her hitboxes are that strong.
She reminds me a lot of AE2012 Rose actually. She’s a solid character, but I don’t find her to be particularly scary.
Also my rule is if Blanka beats a character I don’t think they are that good P:
I’m certainly going to explore her once I get Ultra, I think she has strong potential to be upper mid tier but I keep seeing her placed pretty low. I agree he DP is awful though.
She’s very annoying to run after, that’s one thing I’m sure of about Poison.
Her backdash is super annoying btw, and people play her like they do rose, they just mash it. I hate not having a good OS option for it with Decapre.
I still don’t get how a dp whiffs on a safejump though, thats just nuts.
Poison fireballs don’t seem that great either. The LP one that reaches has long recovery, the ones with short recovery have long start up and don’t reach. Then they don’t move that fast except for ex. They have good properties on paper, but actually fighting against them isn’t that bad.
They are tricky if you’re going to guess jumps but anti fireball moves eat them alive.
Its much tougher for me getting around juri, gouken, sagat, Akuma, ryu. Even rose can be tougher depending on how good the players movement is.
They do seem really good in a plasma fight tho.
This.
I want a Guile main’s opinions on his bad matches in Ultra. Since those like Seth got changed.
The fact that her fireballs are so tall make it very frustrating for Makoto, that I can tell you. Can’t hope over them with axekick as easily as other ones. So you have to block or jump, and she can air to air jHK which beat all Makoto jump attack, even her jHP.
Haven’t found anything yet for that.
The fireballs are an issue to anyone with a shitty jump. I like her fireball game, but it’s not a shoto one, people need to stop relying on her dp for AA. She has decent normal AAs.
It doesn’t go fullscreen…or even halfway also it doesn’t hit overhead. And that fucking fireball jump glitch sometimes I swear I think CAPCOM hates and is taking out their frustration on the obvious glitches alone.
But I don’t think she’s bad either just her dp and cr.hp hitboxes need to be better.
yeah, axe kick is pretty much a jump. if your characters answer is to jump or focus dash, her fireball game deals pretty well with that. but the way they are designed otherwise gives you all day to blow thru them with something anti fireball.
just looking at the numbers you can see why.
44 for lp. a frame less total than ryu. however its not traveling as fast as ryu’s heavy fireball so if it comes out at mid range you have more time to react to it. where as you would end up having to block vs ryu. its also 3 frames slower on start up
then the other 2 are faster to recover, but 17 and 23 frames is like forever on a slow fireball that only reaches out to half screen. plus all the fireballs have a really telegraphed animation. the way she sticks the whip straight up kinda sells whats happening
they arent bad or anything considering you get free juggles on AA hits and with how tall they are makes them tougher to jump. they can obviously compete in a firefight. i just feel that if you have something designed to beat fireballs, it works better against her than other characters
her fireballs are way better for close range pressure and frame traps than they are for zoning IMO
EX LMT goes pretty far, from what I’ve seen it’s farther than Cody’s EX Ruffian (which runs out of active frames 4F before it stops moving forward so it whiffs when it looks like it should hit lol). You’re right about it not being OH. In SFxT it was so I assumed it still was OH in USF4. Still it goes far, quickly, avoids lows and projectiles and is + on block and leads to a hard knockdown.
Plus her regular ones avoid most fireballs as well (like Hazanshu) and can be comboed out of and is only -1F on block.
The final fight fan in me still thinks she should have been able to cancel her back flip into LMT after ~25F. In Final Fight Poison/Roxy would do her back hand spring into her forward flip kick (which looks like the inspiration for LMT)
That’d be so fun. Make it easier to jump fireballs too probably.
Also her fireballs are more “high” than tall. Hakan can slide under them. No meter. And yeah Eternal. I say she’s upper mid. 18-23 area imo.
Of course he can, his slide hurtbox is about as tall as Cody’s Zonk knuckle upper body invincibility hurtbox (which when you get down to it, Zonk is just a really weird slide with terrible active frames that breaks armor.) It’s quite low to the ground. It’s not Dhalsim MK slide or Ibuki DF+MK slide low but it’s really low.
As a matter of fact, Hakan’s slide will make Cody’s EX Zonk completely whiff, a properly timed meaty slide shuts down Cody almost completely. EX Zonk will whiff, backdash is caught, EX CU will get stuffed (probably still gets stuffed or trades now but 54dmg vs 50-70 damage + hard knockdown def a trade in Hakan’s favor. The only catch is that said slide wont be safe on block but he can FADC it.
For poison’s fireball, it may be placed higher than other fireballs possibly (not sure yet, have to experiment with it myself) but it’s still a TALL hitbox no matter how you look at it. 0.25 tall is the 2nd tallest hitbox among fireballs.
I just never had him do it meterless before. Threw me for a loop.
she’s most likely the best of the new characters. followed by either decapre or rolento.
Decapre is probably the best in terms of strength, of course that comes heavily because she got almost all of Cammy’s top tier normals + walk speed + dashes which is a strong base to build a character from. Rolento in Arcade was probably the best of the bunch before Decapre. Now I’d say it’s debatable if he is as good as Poison, both need to be explored more.
It can be hard to do since he doesn’t go low profile instantly, the move has 9-14F startup so he has to be at specific spacing / timing for it to work.
I think Decapres strongest of the new. Then I was torn between Poison Elena and Rolento but I’m pretty sure it’s that order. Elena and Rolento are neck and neck imo.