Aquapazza: Aqua+ Dream Match

[nadakaineko]

Tamaki has great normals for all the situations she controls -- her buttons aren't as multipurpose as Chizuru's and don't have the range of Karulau's, but they're all super solid. There's a reason why Tamaki is one of Chizuru's worst MUs.

[Tigre]

Tamaki's normals are only good in some circumstances, but they have problems against characters with good neutral like Karlau, Chizuru, and to some extent Multi.

The fuck they do, Tamaki has a normal for literally every situation. They're good normals too. They're good normals that put you at perfect spacing to grab the fuck out of the other character.

However, she can just YOLO so it's all good.

Now it looks like you're talking about Chizuru. Tamaki has amazing buttons. They all serve a purpose, and they all help her as a grappler substantially.

You are actually the first and only person I've ever seen say that Tamaki doesn't have good normals, and i'm beginning to think you actually don't know what you're talking about.

[Grimsley-San]

The fuck they do, Tamaki has a normal for literally every situation. They're good normals too. They're good normals that put you at perfect spacing to grab the fuck out of the other character.

All I know is 5A, 5B, 5C, 413C with Tamaki. .-.

[ehuangsan]

Tamaki has great normals for all the situations she controls -- her buttons aren't as multipurpose as Chizuru's and don't have the range of Karulau's, but they're all super solid. There's a reason why Tamaki is one of Chizuru's worst MUs.

That's exactly it; they're good for the situations where she's in control like on oki or after a forced block situation like calling out ulthury or llyr. Outside of that though, her normals are bad when you have to force your way in from neutral. Against characters with good neutral, you pretty much have to try something ridiculous like YOLO 2C for CH attempt, run in 2A or j.A/j. C and failing repeatedly until you are finally let in.

The reason why Tamaki is an even matchup for Chizuru is exactly because Tamaki can fail a lot at neutral (which she does), and still win anyway.

The fuck they do, Tamaki has a normal for literally every situation. They're good normals too. They're good normals that put you at perfect spacing to grab the fuck out of the other character.

So what normal does she have to deal with a turtling arwan/serika, or karlau/octavia who is content on playing the fencing game rather than attacking? And if that is too theoretical, you can go watch the examu cup because the GF is pretty much tamaki struggling in neutral when she doesn't have ulthury out to force the karlau/octavia team to block or jump away.

The reason why people pair tamaki with llyr or ulthury more often than other assists is to compensate for the fact that her normals are quite bad at neutral.

You are actually the first and only person I've ever seen say that Tamaki doesn't have good normals, and i'm beginning to think you actually don't know what you're talking about.

Come to NorCal and try to take people's money with Tamaki then.

[nadakaineko]

okay

[Tigre]

Come to NorCal and try to take people's money with Tamaki then.

Here we have it. What reason do I have to do that? I don't even play this game anymore. How is that even remotely needed here? The fuck would i travel the entire country to prove something in this game lol. The reason Tamakis pick those two assists is because those two assists is that those two assists are amazing. The same reason Chizuru picks Llyr. Tamaki has pretty good buttons in neutral, good jumping normals, amazing up close buttons, and a super that can punish wiffed moves full screen. I don't need to travel the entire country to show you that.

Let me also point out that this isn't the first time you've said some incredibly suspect in this thread.

[ehuangsan]

*shrug* okay. From this and threads in other forums that I've seen about AP, I think NorCal is generally several levels ahead of the rest of the US so perhaps the tech that we are sharing here is fairly counter-intuitive, but I would love to be proven wrong. Maybe at EVO then.

Tamaki is a top character but it doesn't mean she is without problems. Even the JP atwiki entry for Tamaki spells out the problem with her bad neutral normals and what to do about it.

[nadakaineko]

Her main problem is range, same problem that Konomi has -- that much being said, both of them have great normals, they're just stubby. You just might have to pick a different assist for some of the MUs above to help out your spacing concerns. Also remember her movement is very good.

[Grimsley-San]

Her main problem is range, same problem that Konomi has -- that much being said, both of them have great normals, they're just stubby. You just might have to pick a different assist for some of the MUs above to help out your spacing concerns. Also remember her movement is very good.

To me, I think Tamaki just has problems against some certain characters/assists, since Tamaki having to be an "in your face/close range" character.

[Speakeasy]

I'm taking a liking to Chizuru and Ma-Ryan. It feels almost unfair though, since I can usually confetti my way to safety and I'm so damn maneuverable. Is Chizuru just incredibly high-tier or is being maneuverable her thing?

[SoWL]

She's the Kokonoe of this game, so yeah.

[Speakeasy]

I can't have nothin'.... I want to learn someone else now, but that's work and I'll have to learn Morgan's inputs and tricks since she likes to zip around too.

[Crimefighter]

She's less the koko and more the 3S chun. She doesn't really have bad matchups, but doesn't have any blowups either. Just a lot of 6-4s.

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[sibladeko]

Come to NorCal and try to take people's money with Tamaki then.

Let me also point out that this isn't the first time you've said some incredibly suspect in this thread.

Christ you two I regret being linked this. Your ideas aren't mutually exclusive but you descended into a war of semantics and absolute statements and no one wants to back down.

Yes Tamaki has good normals. Yes, she has problems in neutral against people with better normals.

The ideas are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.

Saying Tamaki has problems in neutral against people who have better normals != Tamaki has bad normals.

Ernest your examples all make a lot of sense, but skewing your examples for Tamaki toward fighting Arawn, Karulau, Chizuru, and Multi at neutral is just a selective as all hell sample size.

Especially when the average strength of the cast in this game is so low in general.

I'm not going to go into some shit like she has the fifth best normals or w/e since different normals for different characters obviously interact differently in different matchups (lol why is Hakuowlo vs Sasara worse than Hakuowlo vs Chizuru, it's not cause Sasara's normals are overall better than Chizuru's that's for sure, they just interact differently), but calling Tamaki's normals "bad" or even "average" is an exaggeration.

[sibladeko]

To further clarify what I mean:

Yes, Tamaki does not have a normal for every situation either.

But the way that character works is if you are in the range of any of them it's just one huge box of scary shit.

She's got anti-mash, she's got anti-jump, she's got grab, she's got dp-safe, she's got mixups, she's got ticks, she's got air-to-air.

And the range of those normals are way longer than any grappler has a right to have.

That's not even including fucking Godpress, which isn't a normal and which I could write a fucking book on how stupid it is.

So yes, if your normals are relatively safe (THIS IS IMPORTANT AND THIS IS WHY SASARA SUCKS) and exceed the box of doom, yes you can give her trouble in neutral like Arawn and Karulau by staying in that range just outside.

That doesn't mean her normals are remotely bad.

If you exchanged her current normals for Arawn's or Karulau's longer but slower normals it wouldn't work with how the character plays at all, you think that would put her at SSS+?

Shit wouldn't work at all because that's not how that character was designed.

[ehuangsan]

Fair enough. I think I just operate on a different definition of "good normals" which I consider to be for the neutral situation where neither side has initiative, which is a disadvantageous situation for Tamaki against most of the cast because her reach is bad. But it doesn't really matter because yeah, she can just YOLO all day and once she's in your face then her normals and options are ridiculous.

If you exchanged her current normals for Arawn's or Karulau's longer but slower normals it wouldn't work with how the character plays at all, you think that would put her at SSS+?

Shit wouldn't work at all because that's not how that character was designed.

I was thinking more along the lines of 5C not being crouchable or having a Zangief green glove or some other poke that advances her forward and allows her to fight better at neutral.

However she would be almost indefensible and SSS+ tier if you gave her that.

She's less the koko and more the 3S chun. She doesn't really have bad matchups, but doesn't have any blowups either. Just a lot of 6-4s.

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Yep pretty much. She isn't even 3S Chun domination, because Chun has multiple 8-2s and 7-3s in 3S. The best Chizuru has is a 6.5-3.5 against Manaka, with the rest being somewhere between even and 6-4, and every character has multiple chances to win against Chizuru per round. ATM I actually cannot think of another game where the difference between the best character and the rest of the cast varied by so little. Which is why it surprises me that people talk about banning her as she doesn't even dominate Japan tourneys anymore.

[sibladeko]

I imagined Gief with Tamaki's Godpress and my mind threw up.

For minutiae, I don't consider Chizuru vs Riannon better than Chizuru vs Manaka, but that's really not worth talking too much about.

Which is why it surprises me that people talk about banning her as she doesn't even dominate Japan tourneys anymore.

I'm going to have to strenuously object here, not about not banning her in the USA (another subject, another time), but that Chizuru has somehow "fallen off" in Japanese tournaments.

Examu Cup Grand Finals?

Examu Cup 2013 was ALL Arcana Heart 3 Love Max!!!!!, it was held to announce patch 1.04 for the game and was held in September of 2013.

Examu Cup 2014 hasn't even happened yet it's in March, everything has been qualifiers so far and they're adding AP and Daemon Bride (lol)

This really doesn't need to be said but the finals of a qualifier is not the same as the Grand Finals of a full tournament, the SBO qualifiers were full of heroic moments, like a hero player entering SOLO with Morgan and qualifying over a field of Chizurus. But in the end it was just OZ and batta, two super old KOF players, cleaning up everyone else as expected.

The last major tournament for this game was Godsgarden #8, in which the top 8 was purely Konomi Tamaki Chizuru and a single hero Hakuowlo (the best in the game) called Mizuchama.

If you're going mainly by Kohatsu vids sure, maybe Chizuru doesn't dominate. Not to hate on Kohatsu, they have interesting tech (their Serika use comes to mind) and some good players (I root for Mizuchama unconditionally whenever I see him), but I don't see the people who have been dominating this game since version 1.00 in those tournaments very often.

No OZ. No Batta. No KOG. No Kouya. No Go1. No Kaiser. No Takakun. No kasu. etc etc. etc.

When people like that actually show up, it's no contest.

The last time Kouya entered a 2v2 by himself (they let him play two characters! at Kohatsu he didn't drop a game until he reached Mizuchama's team in GF, and when he lost with his Chiz! he destroyed him with his Sasara.

In fact, when I think seriously about Kohatsu tourney character representation, they don't have a single SBO qualifier repping any character except for Mizuchama, who plays a decidedly not amazing character.

The worst part is a lot of the Gods don't even play this game regularly, I log onto Nesica with my AP account to check rankings and such and last activity and I see shit like "last played, Godsgarden #8."

You want to bet about the actual Examu Cup Grand Finals?

OZ's team will win.

He's hands down the best in Japan in the game.

And I predict top 8 to be full of Chizuru Tamaki Konomi, maybe 60%, and I'm only skewing it downwards because duplicate characters are not allowed per team, so you've got room to put in some of the "can win" characters.

Edited January 31, 2014 by sibladeko

[Speakeasy]

Shout-out to Crimefighter's mad book-throwing skills.

[Crimefighter]

They call me stephen king, cause I make you scared of books.

Also, you wanna use slide less in neutral, I got a lot of free damage and pressure by blocking them. Also you probably want to use fireworks more to keep you safe, thats what they're there for.

[Speakeasy]

I kept thinking Ma-Ryan would just get pelted by more books and it would be pointless anyway.

[Crimefighter]

If I block something and you cancel it into fireworks I wont have time to throw a book. Lag might have been an issue in terms of confirming a block though.

[iw2ma]

it's not the lag that's the problem, it's Manaka being ass

[Crimefighter]

Nah I mean like, if you see someone block something and you're running ma ryan you can call fireworks and it usually makes stuff safe, but in lag you might not bother because if you see them blocking and push assist it might take a year to come out because of connection. Manaka being ass is unrelated.

[Grimsley-San]

it's not the lag that's the problem, it's Manaka being ass

Manaka just sucks alone, depends on assists you want to use with her.

[iw2ma]

No she sucks alone, and with any assist. Her + any assistst is weaker than any other character with the same assist. She's also weaker than any other character with any assist.