What does Bison need for Version 2013/14?

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
41

What The Beautiful One said is true. The only way for Bison to do any substantial damage is to do something unsafe, so if the opponent plays safe as well and punishes every Bison’s unsafe attempt to get in, numbers are against the poor dictator.
At low levels though, this is not a problem, since playing safe and being good at anti-airing is not very common.

But that brings a new problem: if they indeed buffed Bison to make him viable at high level, chances are that he would be broken at low levels. This naturally doesn’t bother most of us, but since Capcom (like every other developer) has to take low levels into account as well when balancing a game, maybe it could not be that easy to balance this character. From a developer standpoint, an online community being dominated by Bison scrubs is just as bad as a tournament being dominated by Yun players.

That being said, they might consider re-designing Bison from scratch. For example: what is the most over-used and spammable move/strategy at low-level environment? From my experience, it would probably be cr.lk, since in most occasions it’s a free “get off me” move against people who aren’t good at frame-trapping. Then there’s crossup PC, Head Stomp for those who still get hit by it, spam of scissor kicks and st.HK, ambiguous crossup.

Then they should consider what Bison needs to be viable at high level: an anti-air, higher damage, an overhead maybe, and an Ultra that doesn’t suck ass.

Removing some of the things that make him so powerful against scrubby players and adding some of the things he needs to be competitive at high levels would be the way to go imo. The only problem is that doing so, he would be a totally different character, which means they have to spend more time and money testing him.
And I don’t see Capcom doing this any time soon…

42

Psycho Shot!

43

Not at all. Getting back those bits of damage on the normals would seal the nuances in some unfavorable matches where it is very difficult to get in on. Bison is too counter heavy to achieve damage. He has difficulty getting come backs and lots of tricks other characters have can narrow a lot of his options down to blocking and guessing a lot. Getting back some damage to narrow down those opportunities of offense isn’t asking for much.

If an update does come, I’d like to see him get back the damage he deserves.

44

@ Duaie,

actually it was I who was talking about Bison’s problem as stemming from his safe pressure being weak while his higher damage (which isn’t really that high by comparison to other characters ultra setups and normal combos) being risky, while many of his match-ups can fight safe and out-damage him.

Now this whole business about a character being broken at “lower levels” to me is an erroneous idea. Don’t get me wrong, I know what it is your saying, but what your talking about is very relative. For instance, Geif in old school SF like, say, ST was seen as a harder character to play to all the people I knew back then because of the 360 motion for his command grabs. But for some reason I never had a problem with this motion, it came effortlessly to me, whereas hados and shoryus took me FOREVER to learn. I’m not saying no argument can be made for some characters, even Bison, to be more effective against people who misunderstand or are ignorant of very specific things about the game mechanics, but I don’t think there is any way to really structure game balance around “skill” levels, because what one person finds difficult is not what another does. In the end it comes down to what are the strategic advantages/disadvantages of the character assuming it was played to the fullest.

@ SUPARNOVAX,

I think restoring him to vanilla level damage would do good and he does deserve it. Its an elegant fix. This idea has crossed my mind before as well when I was watching an old vid of Kuma vs some Sagat back when, but if that it done he needs to have his air moves like skull diver and devils reverse fixed as well. Even on EX these moves have serious problems that contribute to his lack of options. Fixing them would give me more setup options, particularly when it comes to wakeup as well as enhance his pressure and mixup/vortex game.

45

I really disagree with the idea that he just needs more damage. One thing not being taken into account when comparing him to SSF4 vanilla, is how mature the game is now, and how well people know anti-bison strategies. The damage in Vanilla may have seemed adequate because the game was newer and he was a tricky character to play against off the bat. But getting in remains a problem for Bison. Against any character with a very strong zoning fireball game, it’s just not fun. The characer in these situations truly feels inadequate. Having to FADC THAT much just to get in is absurd, and quite often, if a good player notices that you like to FADC, he’ll be sure to make sure to follow up the fireball with a poke. I played with Cammy for a few hours today, again, just to get a feel for the spread between characters, and the difference is enormous. Yes, I still lost, but it was clearly because I was inexperienced, not due to any flaws in the character. And having reliable anti-air is just unbelievable. Having people actually concerned about jumping in on you - unbelievable. Having a practical Ultra that works on reaction in some many situations is just awesome. Bison just has a ton of built in weakness. He needs fewer of them. After experimenting with other characters lately. He just doesn’t feel finished. And finally he has too damned many bad/really annoying unfun matchups: Guile, Dee Jay, Chun, Vega, Fei, Honda, Akuma, Adon, Ryu, T. Hawk, Seth, Sagat, Cammy, Abel). And for frame of refence I’m talking about 3800 pp+

Under 3500 PP Bison pretty much ALL RIGHT. Not great by any means, but not so damned glaringly problematic.

46

Sorry was off for the whole holidays. Happy new year to all the Bison players.
So far I really appreciate this discussion and there are a couple of things that are getting much clearer for me.

I really dont think that bringing back the Vanilla damage values would solve all our problems.
Also there are some good points regarding the match ups of bison, we should be very carefull with our wishlist not to make the already good matchups tip over to be nightmare MUs (dont think this will happen but have it in mind). Also the point to make Bison a low level brain dead char can be an issue but honestly I dont think this changes would make him broken in low level play (getting back the Vanilla values have the potential to do it / 120 damage on s.hk smells for “hate mails”)

Back to the “adjustments”!
We have 3 departments where some adjustments must/should be done

Damage Output:
Bisons damage output is too low !!! You have to work so much harder than nearly the rest of the cast. I was watching a game where Akajojo was doing such a good work and made 3 fantastic reads and had viper down to 10% life and “baaaaaam” one EX seismo “shit button” was bringing her back in the game … and there are so many matches I remember where I lost a match due to the simple fact of just doing 80-120 Damage to less in the last 3-4 combos, especially in an FADC combo.

Solution:

  • Better Hitboxes on j.mp (Ultra follow up)
  • One of the SK should have >90 Damage on first hit (for FADC combos)
  • Adjust some close range pokes with less push back and better frame advantage to give him an easier
    access to combo to medium attacks or hard to medium combo (1-framer)
  • cs.mk to s.hk (1-framer) as followup for an FADC combo

Anti - Air:
I am not a friend of chars that have no weakpoints but jumping in on Bison is just a bit to easy. Finally he needs more than some situational tools.

Solution:

  • Better Hitboxes on j.mp
  • Less Startup on cr.hp
  • Better hitboxes on s.mp (Anti Dive Kick Tool)

Offensive Options (Risk Reward Ratio):
I am absolutely fine with having some problems with dive kick / heavy vortex chars, but if you dont get the reward back when you are able to handle this is just annoying!

Solution:

  • Fix Skull Diver (How … I am not sure … but make it like a dive kick that stays out until grounded looks good)
  • EX SK should make hard knock down to give him more set ups
  • Chanceling some pokes (s.hp) in forward teleport should lead to even frames for some mix ups
  • Less start up on Ultra 2 to finally get a “punisher”

I know that not all would be necessary but getting 70% of that would make me so f… happy.

Cheers

47

@exogen
Sorry you’re right, I realized it now lol
But I see your point. What I said came from a simple premise: being a mid-level player myself, I totally understand the frustration players feel when playing against Bison. That’s why I thought low-level players might complain about him being broken.

Anyway, I recently saw Kim1234’s post saying that the only buff he would give Bison would be EX SK making hard knockdown (along with something to gain meter with). That actually makes a lot of sense: Bison needs to be rewarded more from his safe pokes, and since cr. lk combos into EX SK this would be good.

Also keep in mind that if they do rebalance the game, characters like cammy, akuma, seth, viper etc. will obviously get nerfed. That alone may not be enough, but it will help Bison immensely, so I wouldn’t ask for too many buffs at this point.

48

This is Capcom we speak of, they might get nerfed but there is no guarantee that they nerf the right things for them. They might do something stupid and useless overall like nerf Cammy’s SBF which is a horrible move for her anyways.

You’re probably right but just saying you can’t depend on Capcom to be smart :stuck_out_tongue:

49

I agree that bringing back the vanilla damage would not necessarily solve all the problems. I myself am aware of the problems Bison has strategically speaking.

Could be, I like these changes. These changes are not that severe or game breaking, they just enable some of the weaknesses of the character be corrected along justifiable lines.

This one I’m not so sure about. I mean don’t get me wrong, I would love to have one, but there are arguments that he might be broken by just adding this much. I think the problem is that his offense doesn’t pay off like it should. The character really isn’t supposed to be defense oriented, and a good AA would make him such that all he has to do is walk forward and pressure you and you can never jump at him. A good AA would make it so that between C.HP, S.HP (assuming that is the new AA) and s.HK no one could ever jump in on him because that would probably cover mostly all ranges and angles.

But I would like to see an argument in its favor, so can you elaborate and answer these worries?

Don’t forget deviles reverse. That is also one of the worst moves in the game.

Yeah I agree, damage isn’t the only thing, but it is one of the problems.

I think most bison players would agree that the major problems we face are.

  1. having to work so hard and score more attacks on the other character whereas our opponent can just come back all because they guessed right WAY less times. THAT IS a problem with damage. If Bison has to hit you more times then you hit him, due to combos, single attacks or w/e (doesn’t matter) then he has a damage output problem.

The question is, is such a thing justified?

I think the answer is no because

  1. At high level play (which is the only valid way to judge any matchup(S)) his options are poor and many of this setups and attacks don’t work well.

When you put 1 & 2 together you get a character that is average.

I think if you addressed some of the problems with his moves but don’t go overboard and give him some more damage, but again, don’t go overboard, he will be solid.

50

Day 2 or 3 as a cammy player, approx 3 to 4 hours of training room time, no use of Bison. Having used a top tier character for a few days now, there’s zero doubt about the relationship of the two characters to one another. In answer to the question is one character underpowered, while the other is overpowered, the answer is no. Cammy is COMPLETE. Having used a top tier for the first time ever, “overpowered” seems a bad label. Her game is just one without obvious flaws. So of course in relation to a character with flaws, the other is going to seem strong. And using her against other really strong characters seems like a fair battle of skills. So this is a problem of general game design; ideally every character in the game should be like Cammy or one of ther other top tiers. She just feels like how the game should be played, and it feels like there’s no wasted effort in terms of training to reward ratio. If you put in the time you’re going to have a character to be reckoned with. With Bison, you can practice many techniques, and they’re still ineffective against a better character and you’re going to get crushed. It took me using a top tier to totally understand Sanford’s “pick a top tier” attitude. There’s nothing really noble about staying with a character that doesn’t have as much potential. It just means you’ll lose more often, but hey, if you enjoy that sort of thing… At this point, I’m done with Bison. In addition to being a better character, Cammy is ALSO MORE FUN TO USE! There is no GRINDING OUT wins with her. No seeing a character show up at the selection screen and having the wind go out of your sails because you know you’re in for an unfun, difficult, and ultimately unfair fight. Bison is clearly flawed. And so in using Cammy, it’s not even about using a “top tier” it’s just about not wanting to run a marathon with a 50 lb plate strapped to your foot. The idea that using Cammy equals an automatic win no matter what the other character does is Bogus. You still have to be a strong player to compete and win, you’re just not fighting a totally uphill battle to do it. Bye bye Bison!

51

Good luck sir. I keep doing what you’re doing, but end up going back. Probably because when it comes to the tournament, I switch back to Bison since I have more experience with him, then I end up playing with him. Recent tournament I started off by blowing everyone up with Bison, then switched to my new Yun, and rusty Guile. Started blowing up people with them too, but then it went terribly downhill, switched back and just failed. Wasn’t even salty, I just kept thinking “Wtf is wrong with me?”. I did manage to take out all the Cammys, one was mad and refused to shake my hand lol.

My problem is finding someone and sticking with them, as much as I hate Bison now, he’s still my “comfort zone”.

52

@The Beatiful One
No offense but this really doesnt contribute much to this thread and is btw kinda obvious, I am pretty sure we all know that cammy is one of the “complete” chars in the game. The question is now how to make bison “complete” or less “incomplete”. If 2013 will not happen we still can jump all on the top 10 chars or wait for SF5. But never mind … enjoy Cammy, she is a great character.

@Exogen
Regarding better AA Options – The current situation is that Bison is a char that has risky/weak defensive + wake up options, nearly all of them are highly risky (can be countered) or with FADC dont lead to much damage. Please dont missunderstand me, Teleport is at low level a fantastic escape option but can be option selected easily. Yes you can forward teleport to go into a guessing game and counter the counter but … again highly risky. So far not a big deal. We can EX PC (14 frames start up) out of trouble (also highly punishable from most of the cast) but it is an EX reversal that has very poor start up (huge safe jump window), can be thrown and FADCing is not really so good for 3 meters. EX SK (13 frames start up) is good and for 3 Bars you can keep the pressure but it not really leads to much damage when it hits. So … situation is that you need Bar for an reversal option and this option dont do damage or are horrible slow. Basically all Chars with slow/bad reversal options has a 6-8 frame AA poke that has hitboxes that cover deep or cross-up jump ins. S.HK is a great and fast AA but it is not a reliable AA against the nasty stuff like neutral jump or close/deep jump ins. If you know this weakness you dont have to fear Bisons AA options if you have a good timing and spacing and use a jump in with more than 8 active frames. I play a lot gouken and so far I know the situation with having mediocre reversals (not talking about kongo) and the need for a fast reliable AA cr.hp/s.hp. Bisons s.hp could solve this but due to the distance restriction it is simple not reliable. I play against a really good Ryu/Akuma player and he knows the MU really good and he know exactly when my HK will not hit and my cr.hp is to slow and I am not talking about safe jumps. So as Bison you can go for the reversal (if you have charge!!!) but it will not bring you the benefit that it leads to much damage or can easyily be option selected. I dont want a 6 frame cr.hp, I would be fine with 8-10 frames and 1-2 other options that dont trade most of the time. For sure if we would have more damage or better comeback potential than it would be ok to just having escape options and fight our way back … but … you know …

53

I want to add something to my previous posts.

Damage Output:

I believe that PC was designed to be the #1 damage/stun combo tool and SK the tool for positioning and pressure.
So PC really could need more damage (+10) and constant stun (200) on all versions, also for the cross-up follow ups.

Also in general “stun” would be another way to increase the overall damage from Bison without changing too much on
his game, three points here

  •   PC constant 200 stun

  •   EX SK 200 stun

  •   Normal HS 200 stun

Offensive Options (Mix-ups):

Not every move in the game must be super useful but a char that depends so highly on keeping constant pressure
and controlling the match should not have tools that are simple too risky or unreliable.

Additional to the points I already mentioned I think this should be discussed:

  •   DR -2 on block to be SRK safe on block or make it a really good meter building tool (I would prefer the last)

  •   HS needs a wider hitbox or tracking 

  •   Less recovery on forward Teleport

HS is so easy to counter, and especially the chars with a FA that moves your hurtboxes backwards are a no-brainer/
one button counter that directly leads to a max. damage punish on Bison. This is simple ridiculous !!! I am fine with
HS being a situational pressure tool, but honestly in combination with the bad SD the risk reward ratio is much too
high!

Forward Teleport is more or less useless, beside the very risky Anti-Option Select ability and for stylish punishes
when someone is making a huge mistake! Give this move just some frames less recovery to give it the ability to
go into a risky guessing game and to make it viable as a mix-up tool to chancel normals like c.mp or cs.hp and be
in a -1 disadvantage situation (maybe more!)

I also spend a lot of time to think about the impact on Bisons MUs with the changes mentioned here and in my previous
posts.

The major impact would be EX SK hard knock down, this could probably be a bit too much, maybe it would be
enough to give it 200 stun and soft KD time of light SK. With hard KD it would become the #1 combo ender and
would give Bison a very strong offense. On the other side it would be limited by Bisons bad meter gain.

I am sure all this changes together would make him incredible strong and would make him top 5, so it is the balance
between the nerfs and buffs of the rest of the cast. But honestly would all this really change so much for our bad
match ups ?

But three things are 100% clear for me, we need:

Better damage output
Better risk/reward ratio on our offense/mix-ups
Better AA options (small ones)

Cheers.

54

@ Daaadom,

ok, yes I am in agreement with much of what you said, and know first hand the frustration of the specific issues you sited (I think all of use with years logged in with Bison know all to well).

**AA options **I see where you are coming from. I think the best argument you make is that characters that have poor reversals always have an AA. Yes Bison’s reversals are crap. Here is how I see it, you could give him a good AA, and I would not mind that, but I would rather see Bison have fantastic offense that compensates for that. I would like to see others opinion on this?

**Damage options **I don’t know if the damage should be only in the PC, I kind of like the damage being spread out, because his problem isn’t in just one area.

**Offensive options **for the HS, yes increasing the size of the hitbox would be a good idea, as long as its not huge. But a slight increase would make it more reliable. SD is a horrible move and needs a hit box adjustment definitely. teleport, to me that all depends on how much better they make his offense, but in the absence of good reversals it makes sense. I think if you gave him the AA though it might not be necessary.

55

Well, damage increase isn’t where I would completely end it. I would love to do more but realistically speaking if they do a rebalance… damage should go up first before they jig around the frame values. Bison wins a lot of matches on a few notions: momentum, opponent’s mistakes, opponent’s respect/disrespect of the Bison character and player.

As for what I would do after breaking damage values:

  1. Speed up close s.HP for anti airing. s.HK is awesome but I don’t feel like that should be the only one button solution. Give more options.
  2. I would love slide to be a bit more tricky like ST where it can meaty punish and cross up. But probably not happening here.
  3. SFxT traits: far s.MP/s.HP cancel ability into special moves.
  4. Better empty Devil’s Reverse and Head Press tracking. Capcom went backwards with this in SFxT. It’s like magically slower in tracking and more punishable by backdashes.
56

Here’s my 2cents on the issue:

Bison is for the most part fine. He’s just underwhelming for what he does.

  • Bison’s core game plan is footsies. This point has been brought up many times before and only gets truer the more developed this game gets - footsies don’t mean too much in this game. ESPECIALLY single-hit, none combo-able footsies. Not with all the burst damage, not with all the vortexes. Bison needs more damage, period. Nothing insane, just enough so people respect his buttons more. I think this is the most crucial buff Bison could receive.

The following buffs would be for funsies:

  • Speed up c.fierce by 2 frames. Currently (well, when I was still active) I use c.fierce all the time. It has a magnificent hitbox as far as Bison is concerned. My problem is that it’s slightly too slow for certain match ups. I reckon the Zangief match up would become A LOT easier if we could consistently AA with c.fierce. The current situation with Zangief is that his low hitbox on his jf.mk combined with the super slow c.fierce makes it so c.fierce doesn’t get to shine as well as it would say vs a shoto jf.rh.

  • Decrease the hurtbox on s.mk. Currently the hurtbox sticks outwards so many many moves will actually stuff it. It’s a great harass tool against those afraid to push buttons, but to those who already know this weakness s.mk turns into strictly a counter-poke tool. That’s not really threatening to anyone with a cool resolve which overall is Bison’s greatest weakness (those unwilling to take his baits). Being able to REALLY bully with s.mk would get people to the corner quicker which would let Bison’s corner strength shine more often.

57

You don’t have to make it overpowered. It shouldn’t make Bison unapproachable, just a bit harder to constantly jump at him.
Also, maybe they could nerf devil’s attack (damage wise maybe) to make up for his new AAing ability, so jumping at Bison wouldn’t be* too* punishing.

@ShadowOS
You’re right, Bison is definitely designed for footsies and he’s probably better at it than most of the cast (even top tier characters). The problem is that:

  1. like you said, characters with vortex deal much more damage in a much safer way than just doing footsies
  2. top tier characters based on footsies but without a vortex (like fei long or adon) are still more complete characters than Bison (solid reversal, AA).

There is no reason to use Bison over these characters. So I think the possible solutions are:

  • make him do a crap ton of damage off of footsies (which I don’t see happen)
  • give him an AA to make him more complete
  • give Bison more vortex-like options, like a safe jump or even a crossup opportunity after a SK
  • nerf vortex in general, so that the metagame changes in Bison’s favor (which seems the most plausible to me)
58

yea I use c. fierce alot against air tatsu spammers, the start up frame definately should be buffed! Imagine if it was fast like SFxT!

59

He needs a taunt where he scream “YEEEEEES YEEEEEEEEEES”

60

Give him vanilla blocked LK Knee Press spacing.

Pressure people with three c.LK xx LK Knee Press before whiffing the fourth c.LK