I like this, it wouldn’t even be broke, it’d be a solid option that would force people to respect him a bit more and give him an option to fight derp. This would really help in the Morrigan matchup which, at this point is almost utterly hopeless. I’m not even talking about Soul Fist Morrigan, against air dash S Morrigan there’s pretty much nothing you can do but blow supers.
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now. What do you guys think if IF could do/continue a rekka after his chi? I don’t think it would make him broken or anything. Many times if you mess up or just do a chi alittle too close, you get punished. Of course you shouldn’t be doing so in the first place but it would make him more interesting to bait people in doing something and punishing them, kinda like a frame trap with Fei’s third rekka. If he can chi during the second part of a rekka series, I think he should be able to follow up with one more rekka instead of ending it there.
I like that idea, chi xx crumple would be good to counter stuff like dive kicks and Helmet Breakers. I’d finally have to answer to stop Hulks mashing H all the time.
Does the crumple rekka break standing H from hulk without having to do 3 hits? If it does oh my god have I been using IF wrong against Hulk haha.
I like that idea though. Something to think about if Capcom ever decides to get around to patching the game.
No, the idea is to absorb Hulk’s H and then crumple him during his recovery.
I’ve thought about this a lot before, and I think they can give him any 1 of these things to make him great.
cr.A hits low:
This one is kind of a given, it just makes his pressure game and mixup game less dependent on his rekkas, and makes it scarier to neutral block iron fist. He has a decent hi-low game as it is a-la blockstun + rekka moves, but if you want to open them up with a quick low your fastest option is10 frame crouch C. cr.A being a low gives you a 5 frame startup low move, and is just enough to make him scarier, if not at least to make your opponent get more accustomed to crouch blocking and makes the overhead a more dangerous option against people.
S hits non-grounded opponents:
I don’t entirely understand what the purpose was for this normal to ever NOT hit opponents who aren’t grounded, except to make him focus even more on his rekka chains. It hits low, but that in no way compensates as no one in their right mind is going to fish for a super jump combo off of naked launcher and hope it works because it hits low. If it hit airborn opponents, some of the weirder hit confirms would be easier to deal with and he would just be more consistent.
(I say that as a player who has trouble getting some of the weirder hit confirms, but lets face it. It would be a pretty simplething that would be really comfortable to have in a bad situation)
Command Grab:
Iron Fist, from the first time I saw him play, felt like a character who would have a command grab. Maybe a yun/yang/fei style grab that just opened up a combo opportunity off of some frame advantage or something, but it felt like that was something missing from his gameplay.
HOWEVER a command grab would make him extremely good, this kind of a tool would make him better than I think the general purpose of this thread is. ESPECIALLY with the ability to kara cancel his standing C into rekkas, one could assume the same would happen to a command grab if he had it and he’d be insane. In a world where blockstrings are mixups, and pushblocking him out does nothing to get you out of the mixup. Literally guess command grab, lowC, or blockstun into another 50/50 high/low mixup.
Now granted, a character like wesker has a command grab and lord knows he has more than enough tools as it is, so I suppose it wouldn’t be unheard of if I.F. had a command grab, but it would definitely be really cheap.
Some other thoughts include maybe giving him another OTG option that doesn’t cause a groundbounce. Its not a particularly huige deal, but I’m not amazingly fond of the idea that using my overhead in a mixup cuts my combo in half, as I lose my OTG. If you use the overhead to open someone up, you literally get limited to one rekka chain into a super (unless your J.Wong, and just do another overhead to OTG and then normal grab them).
Also, if more of his moves had armor. Chi Cancels working as a parry is great, but they have so much recovery that you can only really use it to fish for a counter hit super most of the time. Its not amazingly useful against a lot of the zoning characters in the cast, since it only has 1 hit. The fact that the rekka moves he has that are invincible/armored are only available as the third part of a rekka chain was another thing that struck me as bizarre.
Maybe if his qcf.C rekka has 1 hit of armor on it. At the range where qcf.C would be ab le to hit, characters would get a lot more scared and it would just help his pressure game midscreen, and you could get a slight follow up. Though it occurs to me that if it got blocked you’d be in range to chai into qcf.A, and be frame neutral and in their face, which would be a VERY good tool.
Ultimately though I feel like making his cr.A hit low would be enough in itself to bring him up to upper mid tier.
Why would it have to do 3 hits? If you’re asking that because there was that 3-hits-of-armor buff going around for Hulk at one point before the game was out, they took it out before the game actually came out. Hulk has no moves with more than 1 hit of armor.
Having a command grab definitely would be very awesome. The only question for that is, if he had a grab, making the opponent grounded like a Fei Long grab would definitely make him too good because of his damage. But if the command grab leaves the opponent in the air or uses a wall bounce then it wouldn’t be as effective except just to keep your opponent on his toes I guess.
Wait wait…is this for real? Well either way, a crumple hit won’t stop hulk standing H unless its followed by another rekka or timed a chi at the right time. As of right now I can’t get 2 hits in fast enough during the initial swing, and get blown up by Gamma charge if I even try to punish it.
Yeah, it really is for real. However, what you just said is true as well, so strategically it’s just the same anyway. I just wanted to clarify that the business with Hulk’s s.H is one of those buffs that got silently taken away from the release version of Ultimate (like Dormammu’s level 3 not requiring you to wait a bit after a knockdown to connect).
double jump would be nice
a command grab since he lacks a good normal low
air rising fang would make for some crazy air combos if they made it right
personally I’d like the armor on the chi activations to start earlier.
This guy needs a damn low.
After watching the winners finals at Winter Brawl, and Justin’s IF getting bodied by Morrigan, i go back to my original post. He needs Iron Rage to be 100% invincible to projectiles. There was absolutely 0 way around Chris G’s morrigan/doom combo or even just Morrigan alone. He needs ways around this. Even a double jump doesn’t solve his issues because he can’t do shit in the air anyway. Even if it was like Bionic Arm, it doesn’t do nearly as much damage and isn’t as fast so I don’t see harm in making that super similar to Spencer.
All I see for him is something in the air to make him more mobile. Like make air qcf :atk: do an air rising fang or something. Also fists of fury should have some invincibility just like bionic arm or at the very least projectile invincibility for 50% to 100% of the animation/distance. That is really all he needs. Assists can cover the rest. Some might argue that he’s good and needs nothing but no character should have to struggle as much as he does just to get in only to get a guarded or hit and sent back to full screen.
BTW that S hitting air opponents is not at all necessary. IF is fine in the combo territory and also in the normals territory.
His sweep is very good imo. If it hits you get a combo if not fd.:h: to be completely safe.
Nah it’s not, you can’t stop people for holding up back with his sweep, and on top of that if you hit the sweep you can’t get a full bnb because it knocks them off the floor.
Makes me cry that all I can do is simply Air H and S and then a very very short set of rekkas into super 
Could be doing SO much more damage. Still JWong put a good show with IF up until that point.
Am I not understanding something correctly in corner if you land sweep: fd.:h: jump cancel air:h::s: land while they are airborne 
:h: bk.:h::qcf::l::qcf: red chi:qcb::qcf::l::qcf::h: iron rage/SOD
Midscreen is ever better since we have a great new combo : :f::h: jumpxx j:h:j:s: land :h:
:h::qcf::l::qcb::h::qcb::s: dash back :h::qcb::l::qcf::h::dp::l::qcb::qcf::h::qcf::s::dp::atk::atk:. Both doing well over 650k for 1 bar starting with sweep. But the upback shit is something we have to deal with or try to punish with mixups.
The thing is, those aren’t really killing anyone and you’re probably at meter deficit at this point so you can’t do it again. His sweep is so slow that it can’t catch peole holding upback. Iron Fist has no mixups that he can use to punish that stuff, and even if he did you’re probably not going to get a combo because they’re in the air.
Damn Gomu you are a downer. I guess we will have to deal with it or find assists to help. He isn’t an A tier character so how much more can we expect from him. but I guess adding a good low to my list would make him an A tier character if not high B tier.