Copy-paste of my post on the Unity thread. Tell me what you guys think.
Spoiler
There are two traits that Cody has in both Alpha 3 and in SF4. He is a hard-hitting character with strong keep-out normals. His weakness is having a poor wake-up. As he is now in AE2012, Cody is a fairly balanced character. He doesn’t have any highly advantageous match-ups and only a few disadvantageous match-ups. In general, Cody has to work fairly hard to land any sort of significant damage as he has no easy way to get in on his opponent. Even when he does get in close, he does not have any safe ways to chip the opponent nor does he have any hit confirms starting from lows. As such, he relies heavily on baits and reads. If the overall trend for the cast in the upcoming patch is to receive buffs, then as a character with relatively even match-ups across the board, Cody should receive buffs as well to keep up.
Reduce the start-up and recovery on his far roundhouse. This is Cody’s best keep-out normal as it has long active frames and is great for catching jump start-up and forward movement. However, it does not hit crouchers and tends to be outranged by many low attacks in the game. Moreover, the move is single-hit and recovers slowly making it very vulnerable to focus attack or even focus dash. Giving this move an overall increase in speed makes it much more usable.
Reduce the start-up on his far forward. The hitbox on this attack is great, as Cody lifts his leg making it more difficult to hit him with a low. It’s great for stuffing the start-up of attacks and stopping attempts to move in. However, the fact that it starts up in 8f and that it is a single-hit uncancellable normal makes it a rather lackluster option in comparison to his low strong. A prime example of why this move is difficult to use is how specifically it must be timed to beat Ryu’s low forward.
Make his Crack Kick truly airborne. This is Cody’s best move for starting his momentum. It goes over lows and stops attempts to move in at the same time. Unfortunately, it has a tendency to be stuffed by many moves including jabs and throws. Because the attack is not airborne, this means Cody can get hit by a full combo or be thrown. Making it truly airborne means that he will be air reset instead of being hit by a combo. In addition, it gives him a way to beat stand tech attempts while he is on the offense. The last thing that this change allows Cody to do is corpse hop. This gives him options to reposition himself after a knockdown which is especially significant when he lands a back throw on a cornered opponent.
Expand the hitbox of his crouch fierce above him. Crouch fierce is a great normal to use when Cody wants to commit to landing a counter-hit during footsies. Unfortunately, it has a tendency to be vulnerable to neutral jumps and cross-up attempts. Unless Cody opts for using a jab or short, he has no good way to cover jumps as he comes in.
Buff his backwards movement speed slightly. Cody’s reliance on baiting with poor backwards movement seems strange. At the moment, Cody players commonly have to resort to jumping back to reset the situation. Being able to back up quicker allows him to not only stand his ground better, but also bait better.
Significantly reduce the recovery of his fake Bad Stone. As it is now, his fake Bad Stone is almost just as punishable as his actual Bad Stone. This defeats the purpose of giving him a fake.
Make Cody release a held Bad Stone immediately upon releasing the button. Holding the button down to charge a Bad Stone has very little use in the first place considering it does not anti-air as well as it did in Alpha 3 and how vulnerable it leaves him to anti-projectile attacks. It’s even more useless when you can’t even release the rocks when you want to because the game waits for the move to charge to the next level before releasing.
These adjustments are addressed primarily towards his footsie and zoning game. While the normals he has are great for keep-out, they are relatively slow, are single hit, and many are not cancellable. These traits make him fairly open to focus attacks and make it difficult to use without leaving himself open to jump-ins and certain attacks. As a result, Cody tends to stick to using his jabs, low short, and low strong to catch limbs and stuff the start-up of his opponent’s attacks in order to land damage during footsies. Giving him these changes allow him to use a greater variety of buttons and reduces the amount of risky reads he has to make in order to land damage. Improving his standing defense like this without touching his wake-up game is the ideal way to keep him competitive with the other characters while sticking to his character design.
good stuff I saw that. my post is on page 7 currently. Has everything listed in this thread + ultra 2 and EX ruffian kick. Though I do emphasize at the start that I expect capcom to cherry pick the best stuff not to give him EVERYTHING I listed.
Good job on writing up/posting your suggestions guys, although I couldn’t even finish reading the rest of the Unity thread - so many horrible suggestions by players who clearly have no real idea about the character at all!
Criminal upper is too safe?
Nerf his stun??
C.lk should be 4 frames???
Ultra 2 should be 5 frames startup???
Yeah, like I could see a character who has trouble punishing his LP Criminal upper complaining but you got some people saying “ALL criminal uppers are 2 safe” lolwut? -10F on HP Criminal Upper is too safe?
I could see nerfing Cody’s stun on his criminal uppers to offset some buffs tbh. Hell I could see nerfing his stun AND damage on his criminal uppers to offset some good buffs. 20dmg off of LP criminal upper first hit 10damage off of MP criminal upper on first hit and nerf stun on the individual tornado hits from 30 to 25 would be fair IF they gave him meaningful buffs in other areas like the ones I listed. Same with nerfing the damage on non-ex zonk or reducing the damage on crack kick from 110 to 100. Those would all be fine IF they gave him some significant buffs.
4F c.LK is no though. no f’n way. That is simply too important for Cody’s entire game. Nerfing it to 4F would ONLY work if they made it able to be chained. Even then it would be a huge nerf to Cody’s punishes, frame traps, limited mixups, and slow walk speed footsies.
It doesn’t matter if people write there about his CU being too safe, or nerfing the cr.lk to 4 frames. The suggestions are so moronic and suggested by really inexperienced online warlords, that they will surely be ignored.
You mean pressing 3 buttons simultaneously to activate it? The only problem I see with that is that, much like Zangief’s lariat, Zonk won’t have an EX version, since three buttons are in use.
to be honest, if EX CU would be buffed, we don’t even need an EX version. having PPP for zonk would be way closer to his alpha counter since you can actually use it on reaction without precharging it.
Yea, that would be quite practical, and surely make regular zonk more viable than it is now.
On another note, I like doing EX Zonk-fadc-ultra, a lot. In many instances when I rush down an opponent and ‘‘I’m in the zone’’, so to speak, I often take advantage of its invincibility frames to bait reversal DPs after a knockdown. Given that Cody recovers fast enough to punish DPs with similar invincibility frames by the time the opponent lands, more often than not it effectively shuts down their offense. So if by any chance we do get a buff for EX CU I would love to keep that option available too. But I wouldn’t mind depending on how good the EX CU buff is.
I thought I was going to be ill after reading about all that stuff. I don’t remotely know how ANYONE thinks any version of CU is safe. You can Ultra punish the Hard and EX versions for Christ’s Sake…