I played a little Balrog at the location test this past Friday. The LP overhead charges pretty fast and helped a bit against Chris King’s Vega. If you play against Vega often you’ll know how fast he can charge and Rog’s overhead had that feel as well. The safer Dash straight is interesting, I often spaced it and then just jabbed after and got some good counter hits or pressure going. HP and EX Overhead are comboable as we’ve been accustomed to in previous iterations. TAP is pretty safe now. I can’t remember exactly but I think it was level 3 that was -2 on block. with Level 2 being -1 on block as well, so it looks like stronger TAPs won’t be absolutely punished on block.
What I noticed as well watching the streams was how consistent people were linking low jab into low strong (1frame link). So maybe they changed the start up on low strong as well.
So they changed TAPs frame data on hit/block I thought it was just charging faster, but still unsafe above lvl1?
I don’t really agree with this as far as making combos easier, although I could definitely see hit-confirms (e.g. st.mk xx super) being easier. We’ll see, but that may be what they’re referring to. Not sure what it’d feel like with an extra frame of hitstop across the board.
This is only a speculation and I’ve not tried it out yet, but I have a feeling that: after balrog’s classic headbutt mixup (jumping roundhouse or jumping forward straight after a fierce headbutt which causes you to land cross up or in front of the opponent respectively) it will be possible to activate U2 as soon as you land -cross up or not - which will mean that provided the opponent has pressed any button like a crouch tech (which by my experience is QUITE often) your ultra will catch them. If you did this after say a jump in roundhouse, cr.lp, cr.lp, cr.mp >> hp.hb, what with the new stun buff on the U2, I think you would have dizzied your opponent after this combo then ultra alone. Of course it relies on your opponent not just sitting and blocking the mixup. What are your thoughts??
Is there a stun buff on Dirty Bull? Right now it does 700 stun and 399(?) damage I think. From what’s been posted so far it looks like the damage is going to be reduced to 120, but the range is improved. And it’s also changed back to a 720 motion instead of two half circles back. As I posted before, the low damage doesn’t justify the better range IMO, not when U1 is so good. But if the stun is buffed and you can guarantee dizzy at least fairly often when landed, Dirty Bull might not be so lame after all if you’re on top of your high damaging combos.
It’s still a lot of the same. I think if Balrog has a better force stand it wouldn’t be so bad, cl.mp is functional, but that’s it. Like if they widened the hitbox and increased the range of close normal interaction for cl.mp or made st.lp only activate as an AA when grounded it wouldn’t be so big a deal. Yes Balrog can do big damage, but can he do it with the opponent crouching without expending significant meter? No. Like if Balrog’s cr.mk, cl.mp link worked on more of the cast crouching, i think Balrog would have a better bnb that would do more damage across the board, that could justify nerfing U2 and it still being functional.
I think the changes to U2 kind of pull it in two directions. Like the range increase makes me think they want to use it as a punish ultra, but the modification to it’s inputs makes me think that they want it not to be hard to input (e.g. 720 motion is hella lenient), which would make me think they want it to be used offensively, but then they nerf the damage, so punishing with it has to have a greater chance to stun or whatever. The chances of you getting some nice high stun combo and THEN landing U2 is possible, but not practical. I can count on one hand the number of times i’ve stunned off of U2. But the number of times i’ve killed or changed the tide? innumerable due to its damage or the opponents desire to not get grabbed by it (e.g. wakeup cr.hp on an attempt to jump out of it).
Personally if there isn’t any significant change that affects the metagame for U2, i might give up the ghost on that ultra.
Ahh ok they may not have buffed the stun I don’t actually know, if it was 700 before then I can’t imagine them having made it any higher. At least balrog will benefit from having double ultra in that he can now punish without charge etc and still use violent buffalo for combos. Although I hate to imagine the kind of damage U2 is going to do when you have both ultras selected…
Yea on the official changelist sheet they were passing around they showed all the new values for charge time for TAP and the new +/- for hit/block as well. I talked to that guy a bit as he was talking to Chris King and I about the extra frame but after like a few reps of whatever combo you are doing, you can’t really notice it anymore.
New TAP Frame Data:
Level 1: +2 on hit / 0 on block
Level 2: +1 on hit / -1 on block
Level 3: -1 on hit / -2 on block
Level 4: -2 on hit / -4 on block
Level 5: -4 on hit / -8 on block
Level 6: -7 on hit / -10 on block
Nothing else was shown beyond that. Level 1 TAP being 0 on block feels incredible for rushdown when spaced correctly because you can just go into 3 frame jab into safe jab straight or throw. Being able to charge up to level 3 TAP safely is a lot of fun too. Ultra 2 is currently completely useless because the damage is way too low. The range is long enough to punish Rog’s dash straight on block but the damage is only 120 and he still doesn’t have enough oki time after it lands.
I was just thinking, is the recovery the same or modified for TAP? I know the 2012 frame data puts TAP at -2/+2 on block/hit for TAP if you FADC any level, any idea if this is still true or with TAP being even on block if the advantage after FADC is different/more positive?
They didn’t really reduce the total frames of the move for the level 1 version. They seemed to just have added 2 more frames of blockstun.
By the way , the new ultra 1 ender is really useful but it does not juggle so you have to just use the old ender in juggles. The PPP (new) ender also does slightly less damage.
Less damage? Is that really fair? I thought they added it in so it would fix the last punch to finally connect when the spacing was whacked. So they fix it and give it less damage instead of whiffing, as opposed to when you are 2 pixels forward and get full damage. It just seems silly to me about that part.
Anyways, like you said, it’s still a really good change. Are there any cases it can be used differently (seeing as it doesn’t juggle)?
One of the things I forgot to test is if you could interrupt the new under or not. It might be possible to kill someone with the chip damage if you can’t interrupt the new ender. The animation of the new ender looked a little by incomplete to me but the game is still 6 to 7 months away so that’s understandable.
One thing is saw from the changelogs that were being passed around is that buffalo headbutt recovery on whiff/block was reduced by 2 frames. Honestly, that change is insignificant because you can still be punished easily for trying to headbutt through a fireball in order to main back charge. I think if they want to keep it punishable, they can keep it horrible on block even worse who cares but give it the old vanilla/super frame data on whiff.
Overall, I have to say though, Balrog feels really damn good with the safer LP rush punch, overhead, and TAP. He really can rush down and keep the pressure without getting pushed out as easily. At first a lot of people seemed overwhelmed by how safe he was but they started adapting and the matches became really fun.
Thanks for all the information Jav1ts! I’m seriously so looking forward to playing Ultra with these upgrades. If only they would do a location test in Chicago. 
Are the LP and MP versions of the OH any faster?
Unfortunately they are not any faster
So LP overhead charges faster and has less frames, but cannot combo, correct? Can you still cancel it into Super?
The new metagame around how to use the new overhead is pretty interesting. All 3 versions look the same at close range so the defender won’t know if you did the unsafe HP version or the safe LP version. The fact that he has safe overhead allows rog to eventually sneak in the unsafe one which can combo on hit and they probably won’t attempt a big punish on block because they will think you used the safe LP one. Dash swing blow has 5 active frames so you should be able to combo from LP and MP meaty overhead setups if you can visually confirm that it hit. also, dash swing blow into EX headbutt will be a risky but sometimes effective trick to mix into your pressure.
LP dash punch changed to -3 again
looks like i wont be playing balrog in ultra
we still got 6 months untill ultra comes out, Correct me if I’m wrong but they’re testing different buffs and nerfs on characters to see how it works out. I highly doubt this is the final product my friends