[CPEX] Hakumen Gameplay Discussion

[Sophisticat]

You must be pure of heart, then St-Toan. It's rare to see an individual not be weighted down by negatives.

[BladeOfJustice7]

Hakumen players are pretty funny lol. It's like you don't want to admit how strong he is.

No one is saying he isn't really strong. But dumb is a strong term, I could accuse Rachel's 6a being dumb because you can do it multiple times and it cannot be contested by any normals.

Dumb is vanilla mvc3 wolverine. Hakumen is nowhere near there, yes he's incredibly strong with answers to everything/everyone. But he can't do whatever he wants whenever he wants.

To be fair to Hakumen players, people who play other characters typically also don't like to admit how strong they are. It's like people don't want their character to be amazing.

You'd find me hard pressed to ever say my characters suck. I'm more prone to say they're strong. My way of seeing if a character sucks or not is my time learning that character in proportion to other players/characters playing the same game as well as my characters options in a match.

There is no doubt Hakumen is strong in EX. As mentioned earlier, the only matchup I hate is Tager. No one else makes me nervous. He's just really solid with few real weaknesses, which would, imo, be the recovery on his Cs and Ds. If you whiff either, you're getting CH'd. He's otherwise got options for every situation.

I hate tager and lambda, because they force me to play outside of my/hakumen's typical comfort zone.

That part makes sense. But the overall feeling I get when talking to other people and seeing what they write is that they tend to undervalue their character's strong points and over emphasize their weaknesses more often than not.

I'm slightly more predisposed to remember my loses, but I'll make so that I'm exposed to my wins more so I know I'm unfree. But still remember to go over my loses to remove any form of freeness.

That would be common to everyone, lol. It's a normal human trait to focus more on pain, loss, and negative emotions than what brings joy. Those are emotions that stay with you longer, so you'll see them emphasized whenever someone speaks about their experiences.

So whenever you get hit, you're going to be focusing more on that. And whenever you hit someone with j.C, you're giving him a traumatic experience, which I think is a really rad way of looking at Hakumen. :D

This is very true.

Just saying, Valkenhyne is still S, and Ragna might not be S but he's as good as anyone who isn't S.

Of course Hakumen is still S.

Valk is still S? I thought he dropped to A.

[toanenadiz]

No one is saying he isn't really strong. But dumb is a strong term, I could accuse Rachel's 6a being dumb because you can do it multiple times and it cannot be contested by any normals.

Dumb is vanilla mvc3 wolverine. Hakumen is nowhere near there, yes he's incredibly strong with answers to everything/everyone. But he can't do whatever he wants whenever he wants.

I would hope Kirbster would agree that Rachel 6A is dumb as well.

And I believe dumb is subjective to the game. You can't really compare what's dumb in one game to what's dumb in another.

[Errol]

Valk is still S? I thought he dropped to A.

I don't know, he might have showed up A in 1 out of 10 tier lists so now Valk players are saying he's A?

There hasn't been real tier discussion in months because people are just looking at dan statistics.

[kirbster]

I would hope Kirbster would agree that Rachel 6A is dumb as well.

And I believe dumb is subjective to the game. You can't really compare what's dumb in one game to what's dumb in another.

Rachel 6a is dumb as fuck lol, and I've gone on record saying that countless times. Man I love 6a. And I agree with dumb being subjective to the game.

As for Hakumen, I'm not talking out of my ass since I play him to a certain extent in EX, which is why I'm this vocal about his strong powah.

[Dreize]

I've seen Valkenhayn listed as an A/A+ tier character in four tier lists, and as S tier in two (those two being Tetsu and R1's tier lists).

If Valkenhayn actually ends up being S tier in CP by general consensus I will die from pure and utter laughter considering all the nerfs he got.

Good/Strong is different from dumb. marvel top-tiers are dumb. Dumb is when you can give zero fucks at almost all times. When you have really good rewards for the actions/decisions you take it just means your character is good or strong, or whatever synonymous word you'd like to use.

I conform with this notion. Nice definition. Zero, Vergil, Viper, etc are all dumb characters IMO.

Obviously this is very subjective (as are most things) but I consider Hakumen to be "Take him out of the game" status or maybe even "God I hate getting touched by this character" status or lastly "A very very strong character, but not full on dumb" status. It sounds like a bit of a contradiction, but it isn't.

Ah well.

[psycofang2]

We don't really see the OD > OOPS I WON method play out in most match videos. So comparing how he is outside of that to EX he definitely seems weaker.

Just not EX strong.

people are going to play that card till its dead.

also the EX>CP thing most wont understand, they'll take it from a glance and not as a whole.

hes powerful as fuck, just not in the all around way anymore

To be fair to Hakumen players, people who play other characters typically also don't like to admit how strong they are. It's like people don't want their character to be amazing.

how long have i been parading around that hakumens is super god teir?

That part makes sense. But the overall feeling I get when talking to other people and seeing what they write is that they tend to undervalue their character's strong points and over emphasize their weaknesses more often than not.

thats dumb, hes stupid strong but only in specific situations now.

EX he was stupid strong because he got 3k+ off practically anything as long as you did the correct combo route, on top of crazy corner push off any route you chose, the ability to passively combo off most counters without caring, his SAFE anti air the one that gives head invul like 90% of the cast was good in EX, he had really decentish oki in EX.

now from what i am seeing alot of the stuff people complained about the japanese found an answer for, i even called it in OHC chat.

Agito, people got hit because it was new, people block it now, haku gets anti aired.

9k tsuhotaru combo, its situational and kinda easy to see coming, if you are feeling disrespectful or ballsy you can mash 2a and RUIN the entire set up.

hakumen is strong just not universally anymore. hes got the power, a shit ton off it but now he needs the right starters to go about showing it off.

but right now a good amount of this is just pre CP conclusion exaggerations, just like in CS1 and in EX. everyone kept saying he was going to be god tier.

hes not god tier. HE IS GOD.

[FatalCounter]

I totally agree with most people said about Hakumen being strong. It is really hard to beat a good Hakumen but I can say that there are more scrubby hakumen players online than smarter ones. For real, the fact that he requires good timing and execution for godlike damage, footsies and hit confirm make a bad Hakumen so predictable and easy to beat. Compared to Ragna or Jin, you need to learn all points of Hakumen in order to be godlike with him. Bad Hakumen players rely too much on D moves, 3C, jump everytime and don't use their godlike 5A or 2A. On PSN it is pretty rare to find a scrubby Litchi, Tsubaki or Rachel but it is easier to find a scrubby Ragna, Tager, Hakumen or Noel abusing their D moves and thinking they are doing amazing combos.

I learned Hakumen in BBCS 2 and I dropped it in BBCS EX but I think that if you are learning Hakumen seriously, you are learning a solid character that can destroy almost everyone.

Maybe I should learn him again as my 3° or 4° character in BBCP.

Edited March 21, 2013 by FatalCounter

[BlackYakuzu94]

I love how we can have a discussion like this evaluating our character's points and weaknesses; generally with a fighting game characters it's either "BAW, X IS BROKEN, NERF, NERF" or "X IS SCRUB TIER". From what I've seen of both EX Haku and CP Haku. EX Haku has better damage options, while CP has more...I dunno, versatiliy? I mean Agito cross ups are damn good considering he only had j.B for that before.

[Errol]

I've seen Valkenhayn listed as an A/A+ tier character in four tier lists, and as S tier in two (those two being Tetsu and R1's tier lists).

If Valkenhayn actually ends up being S tier in CP by general consensus I will die from pure and utter laughter considering all the nerfs he got.

I conform with this notion. Nice definition. Zero, Vergil, Viper, etc are all dumb characters IMO.

Obviously this is very subjective (as are most things) but I consider Hakumen to be "Take him out of the game" status or maybe even "God I hate getting touched by this character" status or lastly "A very very strong character, but not full on dumb" status. It sounds like a bit of a contradiction, but it isn't.

Ah well.

What do you call a character that has one of the lowest populations, but has some of the best results overall and in tournaments? S.

Hakumen is fun to play against. He's just very strong.

[C0R]

Spoilers.

Hakumen gives zero fucks.

[BladeOfJustice7]

I totally agree with most people said about Hakumen being strong. It is really hard to beat a good Hakumen but I can say that there are more scrubby hakumen players online than smarter ones. For real, the fact that he requires good timing and execution for godlike damage, footsies and hit confirm make a bad Hakumen so predictable and easy to beat. Compared to Ragna or Jin, you need to learn all points of Hakumen in order to be godlike with him. Bad Hakumen players rely too much on D moves, 3C, jump everytime and don't use their godlike 5A or 2A. On PSN it is pretty rare to find a scrubby Litchi, Tsubaki or Rachel but it is easier to find a scrubby Ragna, Tager, Hakumen or Noel abusing their D moves and thinking they are doing amazing combos.

I learned Hakumen in BBCS 2 and I dropped it in BBCS EX but I think that if you are learning Hakumen seriously, you are learning a solid character that can destroy almost everyone.

Maybe I should learn him again as my 3° or 4° character in BBCP.

This.

And Hakumen has more offensive versatility compared to his CSEX version, but he's more akin to Baiken now. Who people (like myself) complain about regardless and she has good matchups due to her defensive solutions because of that.

So long as Hakumen players must give fucks I can't consider him a "dumb character", he doesn't have blindly abusive tools. You don't see people throwing out random agitos anymore because it's a waste of a star, and you don't regularly see 9k OD combos either.

And kirbster, because you sub Hakumanz I thought you'd know better than to say he's dumb. Yes he has certain dumb tools (kishuu, jb), but you can't just throw those moves out whenever you want and 90% of the time you'll win.

Oh yea, and apart from Hakumens AA being safe on block, it still sucks. Make that shit a traditional AA, like Ragna's and we can talk. But beggars can't be choosers since he didn't have one for a while.

[Dreize]

What do you call a character that has one of the lowest populations, but has some of the best results overall and in tournaments? S.

I must admit, that is seemingly a very delusional way of thinking. I'm 100% sure that you're entirely aware of current Japanese tournament statistics in relation to CP Valkehayn, but how on earth do high tournament results indefinitely equate to S tier characters? I was under the impression that players play characters, and characters don't play characters.

Because, you know, I always thought that under a logical mindset people would evaluate character's based upon their individual toolsets and compare those aforementioned toolsets among the other cast members in order to rank them in something such as a tier list.

Extend Valkenhayn is a very very strong character (arguably the best in the game), thus he received some some well-deserved nerfs in CP. Damage, meter gain, mix-up, defense, etc nerfs (he did gain a few nice little things though). CP Valkenhayn is currently the worst Valkenhayn iteration thus far (which isn't necessarily a terrible thing since he was solid in every game). CP Valkenhayn is a solid character, and I truly believe that he is somewhere in A tier. However, I do not believe that he is S tier anymore. But of course, that is just one person's opinion (and who knows, this may be an entirely premature opinion).

Oops, I've gone off-topic. Oh well. Whenever Valkenhayn is mentioned I have some sort of semi-legal obligation to respond to whatever critique he is undertaking.

[BladeOfJustice7]

@dreize, he's your main ofcourse you have a reason to respond.

Kirbster calling out Hakumen as being dumb got me to post :p

Also they "nerfed" his mixup game. He still has insane katame and almost impossible mixup/pressure. He's mostly hurt in the damage area. it's quite funny that regardless of how they nerfed him in every game, he's never sucked yet.

Back on Hakumen, I doubt he'll go back to his cs2 status, because the developers know where they're going with him same with Rachel. And I personally feel that they did an excellent job with Hakumen considering how they revamped him so much from his ct-csex template, to something new entirely. usually characters end up sucking, HARD, when developers do this but he turned out to still be very strong.

[dioxideUniversa]

what i don't get is people acting like tsubaki>hotaru>kishin is the only overdrive combo he can do that adds significant damage

also the lack of acknowledgement about being able to get much higher midscreen damage than in EX is also strange. a lot of times he doesn't even do corner combos, he just does midscreen combos in the corner (or at the very least the occurance of corner combos in CP is lowered compared to CSE)

while for turtling there isn't a good way to express the tradeoff as good, being able to get 5k+ off a normal parry for low meter is kind of a big deal

really though, his damage is goofy and his OD is goofy, should've just made mugen useful and made that his OD and not made a bunch of these other silly changes. my favorite part was they made everything in mugen repeat prorate so you couldn't do super high damage combos, but then they made OD which lets you do like 22 star combos without the restrictions of mugen

Edited March 21, 2013 by dioxideUniversa

[Errol]

I must admit, that is seemingly a very delusional way of thinking. I'm 100% sure that you're entirely aware of current Japanese tournament statistics in relation to CP Valkehayn, but how on earth do high tournament results indefinitely equate to S tier characters? I was under the impression that players play characters, and characters don't play characters.

Because, you know, I always thought that under a logical mindset people would evaluate character's based upon their individual toolsets and compare those aforementioned toolsets among the other cast members in order to rank them in something such as a tier list.

Extend Valkenhayn is a very very strong character (arguably the best in the game), thus he received some some well-deserved nerfs in CP. Damage, meter gain, mix-up, defense, etc nerfs (he did gain a few nice little things though). CP Valkenhayn is currently the worst Valkenhayn iteration thus far (which isn't necessarily a terrible thing since he was solid in every game). CP Valkenhayn is a solid character, and I truly believe that he is somewhere in A tier. However, I do not believe that he is S tier anymore. But of course, that is just one person's opinion (and who knows, this may be an entirely premature opinion).

Oops, I've gone off-topic. Oh well. Whenever Valkenhayn is mentioned I have some sort of semi-legal obligation to respond to whatever critique he is undertaking.

It sounds to me like you're advocating theory over results. Players playing characters is meaningful when you have standout players, like Goro or Konan. But when a character like Tao, or Valk, has 10 players that are on the level of the standouts from other characters... combined with the fact that Valk is one of the least played characters...? I think theory should then start trying to explain the results. Like how Hak players are here trying to understand why Hak is still S despite feeling weaker than EX, right?

[psycofang2]

what i don't get is people acting like tsubaki>hotaru>kishin is the only overdrive combo he can do that adds significant damage

also the lack of acknowledgement about being able to get much higher midscreen damage than in EX is also strange. a lot of times he doesn't even do corner combos, he just does midscreen combos in the corner (or at the very least the occurance of corner combos in CP is lowered compared to CSE)

while for turtling there isn't a good way to express the tradeoff as good, being able to get 5k+ off a normal parry for low meter is kind of a big deal

really though, his damage is goofy and his OD is goofy, should've just made mugen useful and made that his OD and not made a bunch of these other silly changes. my favorite part was they made everything in mugen repeat prorate so you couldn't do super high damage combos, but then they made OD which lets you do like 22 star combos without the restrictions of mugen

alot of what you posted general people dont see because that means hes not as retarded as they are making him seem.

the mugen thing imho, mugen just needs to go, kishin does what mugen does just backwards, stacking them causes them to nuetralize itself giving him unlimited stars.

which is good for us but in use its pretty stupid, everyone else got meter gain nerfed, haku needs meter to combo but not on that level.

his damage isnt evenly spread around all his tools anymore, now it comes down to a select few which decreases the effectiveness of some tools but severely boosts the effectiveness of others. it becomes an unbalanced attack power, where doing some things yeild less reward while doing something absurd like tsubaki hotaru OD in the corner at half hp yeilds insane rewards.

instead of getting average to above average in any situation.

[FatalCounter]

It sounds to me like you're advocating theory over results. Players playing characters is meaningful when you have standout players, like Goro or Konan. But when a character like Tao, or Valk, has 10 players that are on the level of the standouts from other characters... combined with the fact that Valk is one of the least played characters...? I think theory should then start trying to explain the results. Like how Hak players are here trying to understand why Hak is still S despite feeling weaker than EX, right?

I have to agree with this. On Jourdal or Pktzan channel you can clearly see what Errol is saying, but this is not a deal for me. Taokaka and especially Hazama are above other characters; maybe with Jin and Litchi. Konan, Puromete, Goro and some others are just better players in my opinion.

[Errol]

I think Jiyuna made the observation that if you combo Hakumen, he gets more meter from your combo than you do. Which is kinda funny.

[psycofang2]

but its almost always been like that.

he gets about 2 stars from long combos from the attacker.

thats roughly 25 heat without adding decimals with meter gain in between stars.

[dioxideUniversa]

his damage isnt evenly spread around all his tools anymore, now it comes down to a select few which decreases the effectiveness of some tools but severely boosts the effectiveness of others. it becomes an unbalanced attack power, where doing some things yeild less reward while doing something absurd like tsubaki hotaru OD in the corner at half hp yeilds insane rewards.

instead of getting average to above average in any situation.

some random hits, some parries, some hit confirms yield less reward but just because it's less than in CSE, does that mean it's less than on average across the whole cast?

he got tools that were buffed that aren't tsubaki hotaru OD in the corner (tsubaki hotaru OD midscreen does high damage as well...) 3c CHs yield very high rewards now and midscreen throws yield higher rewards than before as well. isn't it average for most characters to not get great rewards off everything? it's the best characters that have high rewards in nearly all situations.

and even then, the rewards he gets when he does get rewarded tend to be a lot higher than other members of the cast

[BladeOfJustice7]

6c is a more effective punishing tool than ever before as well, just saying.

[SansProtocol]

Go play some games or enjoy a nice walk outside without your phones, guys.

He's really good in both, awesome.

[Ctrlaltwtf]

outside

Pffhhah.

[itsme]

I think Jiyuna made the observation that if you combo Hakumen, he gets more meter from your combo than you do. Which is kinda funny.

That's most likely because in CP Haku's 1 mag specials cancels out the meter gain penalty from our 2 mag+ specials/supers so he gains more meter overall compared to before.

EDIT: I misread the post because I just woke up :V

Edited March 21, 2013 by itsme