This new hit stun det is pissing me off a lot.
i honestly feel like capcom wanted zero to be more of an anchor character
they nerf his assist extension options and confirms (tbh, they nerfed everyone’s. its just that because his hard knockdown is gone, it affects him a lot more) but instead give him more options to open up via special cancel buster, ie tk M lightning, cross up and immediately buster with m dash, etc. his movement options are pretty funny in xf3 spamming raikousen and buster canceling everywhere
It’s not the combos dropping that annoys me about the hit-stun, there’s some fucked scaling going on now too, certain extenders do LESS damage than without them now FFS.
Yeah my friend told me that his lightning attack adds something like 50% more hitstun to your combo’s so its pretty much unwise to use lightning move in combos because you’ll do less damage due to the opponent popping out like halfway through your combos.
Unless they changed how hitstun is calculated (the actual formula, not the individual values) then hitstun scaling is (and always has been) determined by the length (in time) of the combo. Whereas damage scaling is entirely determined by the number of hits in a combo. This is really easy to test and confirm in vanilla, but I haven’t tested ultimate yet. Lightning therefore does add a significant amount of both.
New Zero feels a lot tighter in terms of combos, in that I actually have to pay attention when I hit the opponent. Advanced BnB still works, but dang that’s harder than it looks, and much harder than it used to be.
On the other hand, buster cancelling is so. much. fun. 
Steb Extender still works (atleast with Eye of Agamotto, not tried with Jam Sesh) replace the first LK Raikousen with H Raikousen (sj cancelled) then cancel the recovery really late into Buster, L Raikousen, Dive. Done.
So has anyone considered Zero (hadangeki)/Vergil (rapid slash)/Morgian(dark harmonizer) as a sort of gimicky zoning team? I wanna mess around with it in ultimate.
The basic idea is to have Zero in sougenmu for as much of the match as possible and play a strong zoning game with hadangekis, M/H Raikousen buster cancels, and general sougenmu nonsense while I’m spamming Morigan’s assist for meter. If they have a “random beam super” kind of character, I’ll switch to psuedo rush down and try to get to 2 bars to sougenmu->spiral swords and play a more rush down style with spiral swords backed up by sougenmu’d hadangeki.
Thoughts?
Also, has anyone checked if Zero can still do an uncounterable TAC in sougenmu?
I read somewhere that the uncounterable TAC was removed.
That was something I wanted to test but forgot. I’ll do it soon unless someone beats me to it.
Nini Heart was the one who confirmed its removal iirc and I’d say he’s a pretty reliable source.
After about 5 hours of playing with zero today, I honestly think he is moderately nerfed overall.
The hitstun nerf for umvc3 hits zero pretty hard. You really have to dumb down your combos and you REALLY need to understand how the new hit stun deterioration scales with each hit or you’ll be dropping combos that would have worked in vanilla. With the right team, he can still TOD a lot of the cast but it’s not easy considering the meter building nerf also. The worst thing is the assist hit stun scaling nerf. It pretty much forces you to do the basic bnb relaunch into steb (or light steb) ender if you want to see any good dmg from zero. This means if you don’t have the few assists in the game that are capable of doing the steb (or light) ender then you might as well not use zero.
As for buffs, I’m loving the special buster cancels. It makes him so much more unpredictable and it makes his zoning really good. Lightning into immediate buster cancel is godlike, It makes him even more fun then before.
Hopefully we can find some new technology that will make his combos as damaging as in vanilla. Possibly a new combo extender? We’ll see. Until then, hit the damn lab.
I’m working really hard on grinding out some Zero tech. Currently working on new Zero/Dante DHC’s. I think I can make it work, but it’ll be a while.
Anything I find I’ll record and upload soon.
Anyone already throwing in the towel with Zero: I respect your decision, but I think you’ll be mad disappointed with that decision too.
That’s all I’m going to say. 
I look forward to it. I usually have to keep my Rekkoha/DT stuff so simple they barely break 1M anymore unless I spend another meter on Million Dollar.
Had to change my BnB a bit to fit my new team/hit stun scaling, but I’m still getting 900K 1 meter combos with only one trip to “the lab.” It only gets better, right?
Switched Doom from Molecular Shield (They flip out super early now 
) to Hidden Missiles for some swag enders.
I played some casuals yesterday against some regulars who give me a challenge. One guy played his usual team of Hulk/task/trish. Another is picking up Nemesis, which is a mistake because he dropped dormamu.
Zero makes the fight look free against the big hit box characters. Sword beam into buster is a huge tool for controlling the ground. Zero can still runaway in the air all day so he never gets caught. It is very unfair and I love it.
I feel Zero is buffed. Hulk may have been easy or free in vanilla but now he pays you money to beat on him.
Got 2 solo combos right now that both make use of the Z-Buster cancel in the combos (Z Buster cancel sets up mad resets too so if you miss the float of the vanilla buster, knocking with buster than lightning makes them go waaaay higher so gives you tonnes of times for off-screen mixup.
Anyway, yeah the 2 combos I have right now are both netting between 750k and 850k but I’ve gotta work out the kinks before I post the final notation, still modifying as I go along.
Man doing the same old normal stuff is so much harder now… trying to retrain my fingers to do new enders/add a dash because of a cross up lightning, but I am dropping stuff like crazy… On the bright side, opening people up is much easier than it was before which is nice, also Pheonix Wright trolls can’t get evidence at all versus Zero which is nice.
Seems to be up and down right now, we will see how things develop.
I’ve fought Cloud for about two hours today. Zero/Vergil DHC is probably the new Zero/Dante DHC. The combos after the the sword super is mad good.
Vergil himself is really strong, so I’m tempted to switch Dante out for Vergy, if I can’t make Z/D work anymore.
However, I did get some things recorded and I’m gonna upload them very soon. Including my new variation on the Z/D DHC.