Lol true, I picked up Evil Ryu just before Ultra dropped, but then I didn’t play for a month, then the boring online train. I was thinking damage also. There’s certain characters where ending in ex tatsu just puts yourself in a 50/50. Evil Ryu’s cr.mk compared to Ken’s…
His damage is quite low from far ranged pokes. cr.MK doesn’t always link to fireball at some ranges you think it would. His punish damage however is very good both of his Ultras do over 475 damage
He also has these meterless and metered
cs.HK xx HP SRK. 260 (meterless)
cs.HK xx EX tatsu. 320 for (1 bar)
cs.HK xx MP SRK xx Super xx Ultra 605 damage (full super/ultra)
I don’t like using cs.HK xx HK Tatsu because he’s at frame disadvantage at the end.
His BnB damage is kinda bad cr. LK > cr.LP > cr.LP XX HP SRK is only 179 damage. He needs meter to do more damage. His backdash is awful, I was kind of hoping they would balance for the SRK nerf but nope, that 10 damage added to his HP SRK must be breaking the character or something.
His fireball recovery is not so good and his HP SRK has imaginary invincibility because that shit trades with everything. If I had to put him on a tier list, I would say given nerfs other characters got and changes to him he’s exactly in the same spot he was in AE2012, maybe a little better. He doesn’t have any match ups that feel very difficult.
I think Ken is easier to use, when I want to play right away without hitting training mode I just pick Ken and hop online.
The fact that Ken Bnb are all a bunch of light into HP DP always felt weird to me.
Almost all over character can atleast put a medium or two in there for damage.
If the opponent is standing you can always hit confirm into c.mk - ex tatsu, or you can hit confirm into cr.hp to force stand. Many Ken choose to use standing jab cuz c.lp - cr.hp is a one frame link.
But then we see players like MOV who do cr.lp - cr.hp - dp after a cross up mk.
Against standing opponents you can also chain into cl.st.LP, then you can maybe link into TC and maaaaaybe connect fully. His combos are actually good when the opponent is standing.
The problem is that it’s actually not easy for Ken to get into the range in which he can do the link cr.LP -> cr.HP, especially if he starts it from cr.LK. His improved walk speed helps him go to a bit closer than mid-range, but the problem starts there. Step kick pushes the opponent a bit too far out, he doesn’t have a rush-in move, and his overheads are minus on hit so his offense usually stops there. The best bet is overhead faint but it only works so many times before the opponent knows how to deal with it.
If he is point blank he can do cr.LK xx cr.LP -> cr.MK xx HP SRK, but he doesn’t stay at point blank very long for the reasons above.
Basically, Ken wants to keep the opponents standing, but it’s not easy to discourage them from crouching.
I may be wrong of course, especially on the part in which I said “Ken wants to keep the opponents standing”. I just wanted to give out my personal opinion about Ken. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Pretty much this… you force them to stand with FTK
All his setups off Kara throw were nerfed by delayed wake up, if your opponent does delay their wake. He did get some new setups of MP SRK though. A majority of his old setups were off his HP SRK… but have fun doing 179 damage at most when you get an opening
Also, He doesn’t gain anything out of comboing into his sweep… actually in the last two years I have only seen Momochi combo into it once and that was on Kazunoko’s Yun in Version 2012. He did cr.LK > cr.LP > cr.LK > fs.LP > cr.HK
By far I’m not saying Ken is bad (he’s actually good) I’m just pointing out what’s wrong with him because you asked
Ken has IMO better footsies than Evil Ryu but worse conversions. I’d even argue Ken has as good of footsies as any other shoto if not better heavily thanks to the walk speed buff combined with his step kick, F+HK, F+HK feint, 4F crMK, and the best kara throw in the game. I’d rank his anti airs worse than Ryu if it wasn’t for kara DP which makes them close to equal.
However his rewards in footsies are lower than other shotos unless he gets a counterhit F+MK or F+HK or the opponent is standing.
Evil Ryu has very solid footsies but less ability to control some space thanks to crMK being slower and not having quite as good a kara throw or step kick (far MK doesn’t move nearly as far as F+MK does for Ken.) but Evil Ryu gets much better rewards for his offense and risks taken.
I think Ken is better than Ryu (slightly) but not as good as Evil Ryu overall, this is just judging by observation though.
Tbh the cr.hp link doesn’t seem too hard, offline anyway. Online has almost cost me a few ranked. I’m just trying to implement new things into my play but he seems limited on what he can do. Cross up tatsu stuff is Godlike and as much as I love doing it into Ultra, it’s a gamble. Been trying to make use of red focus also, but he doesn’t have it easy like Viper/Yun/Evil Ryu. I know he can get decent damage from it when cancelled from 1st hit of hp dp, or mk tatsu. Yeah his setups are kinda meh now cause of DWU, if I see them do it often: I just throw out a normal like st.mp after a heavy KD, if I see technical I go for a crossup or whatever, if not, I try to stay grounded so I don’t eat something mashed out. I should try to not kara throw as much too, probably an online habit since I can probably get away with it, I’ve actually been told “Why don’t you just play a grappler?”
lol
http://www.airryu.com/the-bad-match-ups-of-evil-ryu-that-daigo-approved/
I thought that Ryu was one of E.Ryu’s worse match ups in AE2012 and people gave me shit for this.
AE2012: E.Ryu had a 7F start up cr.HK and 900 health. Whiff punishing Ryu was difficult and st.MK didn’t cut it when he would throw fireballs right at your face.
What changed this match up in Ultra? If anything Ryu was nerfed a lot more by SRK FADC -5 and Delayed Wake up than E.Ryu was.
Hmm, don’t mean to argue against Daigo himself but I don’t think Ryu is a bad match up for Evil Ryu now. Before in AE 2012 I had it slightly in Ryu’s favor, now I think they’re even. Health isn’t as big of a factor anymore and Evil Ryu only got better while Ryu got worse because his buffs aren’t that big of a deal and he’s more affected by the system changes. Air actually tweeted about that and I replied to him about Daigo’s new strategy against Ryu when he was in HK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmQmbHgOWw4
This is the video, Daigo basically spams hop kick to beat Ryu’s faster low attacks. He did this after losing the first match. I have no idea if this is a new strategy he developed to fight Ryu or if he just did this on the fly during a tournament. I’ve done this myself in AE 2012, but hop kick would whiff against Ryu’s low forward a lot and then I got punished for it because of the long recovery so it wasn’t a good idea. Now it is since the hit box got expanded. Regardless it worked out for him, though I’m not sure if this is a viable long term strategy. I haven’t had many chances to try it myself since I rarely run into Ryu players nowadays.
EDIT: I realized I put in the wrong tweet. So that’s why Loyal has a different tweet from Air that this post currently shows.
It’s risky to go for it, but effective if you know the opponent is going to throw it out.
- Yun
- Evil Ryu
- C.Viper
- Cammy
- Fei Long
- Ibuki
- Makoto
- Akuma
- Adon
10.Juri
From my experiences so far and observed tourney results. What are everyone else’s top 10 so far?
Rose and Ken would be an honorable mentions. Other characters who I see as very strong are Gouken, T.Hawk, Ryu, Dudley, and Rufus. Could Ultra end up being the most balanced SF so far? I think Combofiend said they’re not done with the game too…
The community is at least eight months to a year away from being able to say anything more concrete than “so-and-so seems strong.”
I like tier lists as intellectual exercises, but there is so much more road to walk with Ultra.
at this point.
1 yun
2 cammy
3 fei
4 everyone else
after those top 3 theres so many characters that could be slotted into top 10. and none of them really separate themselves to me so far
Everyone seems to be creaming themselves about Evil Ryu.
Akuma might actually be midtier. He gained some bad match ups overall and Yun might even be worse than 4-6
Do you think Akuma has more or less bad match ups than Ken?
he’s good. i just cant see him being that much better than viper, adon, ken, ibuki, juri etc
then theres characters that are just being flat slept on. like abel, guy, vega. like vega has real grounded anti air now. he beats some top/perceived top tier. for example fei vega could be as bad as 7-3 now. but no one talks about him
Vega’s real grounded anti air sucks against most characters tho. I mean, it’s really good against some, but they did nothing to improve its AA hitbox so it flat out loses to jump-ins that has a good hitbox. I would say cross-up j.LK and cl.st.MK have more impact in most match-ups.
I agree there are many characters that are not exposed in Ultra.