The ‘cheapest’ characters would be Blanka, Honda, and Zangief. Basically characters who can sit back and spam high damage moves if you don’t know how to block/counter. Blanka can wakeup electricity, blanka ball vertical and anti-air. Honda can spam headbutt and buttstomp, Gief lariats and spd’s.
That’s pretty much it. There’s no need to get into the whole “oh well it’s easily punished by this”. Only scrubs call characters cheap and scrubs can’t adjust so when they’re up against something that looks safe and high damage like blanka balls, it’s bitching time.
For most characters it’s not a very fun matchup though. The dominant strategy against him is to turtle, and it can be very frustrating if you don’t enjoy playing like that.
When they say ‘cheap’ they mean to say ‘annoying’. Blanka is just annoying as hell and frustrates people, his forward throw does him no favours either.
well… at my local arcade that i go to regularly… I’ve been labelled as the player that nobody likes to play against…
because apparently fighting against me is frustrating… one time i even overheard one of the guy who hates me the most saying ‘who the hell wants to play against him?’
honestly… i think people find Blanka cheap because he’s one of those characters that can easily exploit’s someone’s weakness…
if the guys sucks at punishing
ball him to death… (even now… with a mixup between LP/MP ball)
if the guy sucks at footsies
use normal move on him and poke him to death
if the guy only likes to begin his offense by jumping in…
Blanka has probably some of the best AA options in the game.
if the guy reacts slow
LP balling, hoping at him works well
if the guy can’t handle offensive pressure
electricity pressure him
if the guy sucks at anti-air/jump ins
Blanka’s vertical/quick jump is pretty damn annoying.
the list goes on… but honestly unless the player has a strong basic knowledge of both blanka and the game… it’s really not that hard to win… and people are pissed off because chances are you’re not beating him with some big ass long combo which people feel better about… because people usually associate big combos = skill…
with Blanka… it’s all about having a strong basic…
all this and Blanka’s look ‘scrubby’ not cool… like most of the other characters
Disagreed really ;[ His highest execution requirement is something like hitcoing c.LK c.LK ultra. After that it’s pretty simple compared to most other characters.
You got his best bnb something like c.MK s.LP xx electricity or something like that. That is really simple compared to a wealth of other characters. But it doesn’t matter really, lots of people can execute and few can foots/space at high levels. That’s what would separate top vs mid level.
There is one thing that does bug me. Whenever a Blanka comes up in ranked, I tell myself: Probably gonna lag… and 90% of the time, yup, laggy as shit. I think Blanka is typically the goto character for ppl with shitty connections
but yea, other than that, I think it was pretty accurately said in here that the matchup is annoying, because your main strategy is to bulldog your way in, as blankas typically like to just sit there and wait for you to make your move first. but who can blame them? with the hordes of online players that get hit by day one gimmicks and think jumping in is the only way to start off an attack… There’s also the fact that most characters have to use character specific combos on blanka, because of his unique hitbox
in any case, it’s been a long time since I’ve played any good blanka players, so I haven’t really had the chance to experience the “cheapness”
Yeah I really agree. Even when I’m having a bad execution day, I don’t feel that limited in terms of what I can do. short short short ultra or st.mp, cr.mk xx electricity is probably the hardest Blanka’s execution gets. The thing is most characters have weak execution requirements in this game in general.
I have Ryu and Viper subs and I find it easier to do their shit than Blankas. Primarily because the penalty for messing up with them isn’t as big as when you mess up with Blanka, and they don’t have as much char specific stuff to remember (well, learning the timing for Viper’s mid-screen U1 combos is a pain).
Err what that’s not true at all. Ryu’s BnBs are things that can end in c.HK or a DP. f+HP c.HP xx DP huge risk. c.LP c.HK tight link that is like -15 on block if you drop it. All of ryu’s good combos require either FADC or a link. While blanka’s hard BNBs are like c.MK s.LP xx electricity… which even if you can’t link the c.MK to s.LP you still get a blockstring that ends with positive frames.
if you’re talking about the difficulty of linking blanka’s ultra then yes that is not easy at all, but when we are talking execution you usually are referring to BNBs and blanka has some of the easiest in the game. I play balrog on the side and he’s got harder execution requirements then blanka and he’s still super easy.
Blanka doesn’t do big damage because he has no combos haha. I hope no one is thinking that i’m saying blanka is easy to play. He is for sure not. No character is. The ability to turtle and space with him is super hard at high levels.
SPS into cr.hp can be plinked with hp->mp->lp and even if you mess up you still have the mp and lp to fall back on, and even then you can FADC into a mixup if they block. Jabs into sweep isn’t hard. It’s a very rhythmic combo (you can use the same timing as cr.lp int cr.mp if you plink it). I guess I’m just used to doing his combos but I don’t find him to be an execution intensive char at all. Blanka’s unplinkable links are harder than anything Ryu has IMO. You can’t really confirm the last hit of think into a cancel so if you mess up you get punished hard.