Airk

Pretty much what excelence said, with a little bit of elaboration: Generally, unless you do it a lot against the same person, people aren't READY for rapid cancels. There are circumstances where good players might be (They see you have 50 heat and they just blocked something that'll lead into a big punish - Inferno Divider, or Magnatech Wheel or something) but in general, RCs can be quite surprising, and can lead to people trying to punish you when, it fact, you are at frame advantage. Doing something like Ice Car -> RC -> j.B with Jin can result in your j.B hitting someone who was getting ready to punish your Ice Car. This can lead to all sorts of mixups. The only downside of RCs is using the heat for that instead of for something else, though for many cast members, Rapid Cancels are one of the best uses of heat.

This; Has anyone received an actual new move since CS1? The closest I can think of are some changes like Hakumen's chargable 4C or uh... Arakune got some sort of new normal in CS2 or something. But I don't think anyone has gotten any new specials or anything like that. That doesn't seem to be "within scope" of the updates. The Ragna comparisons happen because he has a similar playstyle, and he used to be a similar tier.

Obviously all those characters aren't wishing -that- hard, since they're all above her in the tier list. :P Whatever, I guess. Tsubaki: staying viable by having more stuff than everyone else.

The Tager match was pretty heartbreaking - just one more successful confirm would've won it.

This is a myth, unless you are just talking about her dash speed, in which case, well, great, but honestly, I don't think it makes much difference. If you're talking speed of attacks, however, Ragna beats Tsubaki on pretty much every normal except 5C. For curiosity's sake, startup of attacks (i.e. how "fast" they are): 5A: Ragna 5 frames, Tsubaki 6 5B: Ragna 8, Tsubaki 10 5C: Ragna 13, Tsubaki 8! Yay! 2A: Ragna 7, Tsubaki 7 - I guess they both got nerfed from CS2 2B: Ragna 9, Tsubaki 13 Blahblah stuff. Sorry. I guess I'm just tired of being told that Tsubaki is a "fast character" when the "average character" has much faster attacks than she does.

It does more than Tao's! But then, Tao's comes out in 6 frames and is an excellent pressure tool. :P Like the fact that everything he does controls a ton of space, and he still has a slow-but-plus-on-block special move? Or the fact that he gets like 3.5k off a midscreen overhead for no meter?

Technically you only need to air-barrier GROUND inferno divider; Air inferno divider can be airblocked normally.

I'm not entirely sure I endorse paying a big pile of money for a custom stick as your first stick purchase - if you want custom art, I'd suggest an art mod on a TE stick or something instead. (The 360 TE also has the advantage of being super easy to dual mod.) You can get something like that for somewhere in $125 range plus a bit more for the art (unless you do it yourself.). Also, don't necessarily expect a stick to fix all your input woes.

I only get hatemail from the infamous cabutler, who, apparently, calls EVERYONE a runaway turtle and threatens to break their limbs. The ability to trade meter for stocks would be phenominal, especially if it were a super short move so you could use it to super cancel something mid-combo and pick up afterwards with more stock. Like a 4+3 frames before/after superflash for startup, and maybe 10 total frames or something. That would be awesome.

Well, you see, if you take two characters that are basically middle of the pack balanced, and give one of them a huge pile of buffs to even super basic stuff, and you give the other one a huge pile of nerfs and a couple of gimmicky boosts, obviously you get a more balanced game... I am, at this point, fundamentally convinced that Arksys cannot POSSIBLY be this stupid, and that there was some sort of catastrophic mistake where they pushed a half-finished version of this character live, and they just haven't noticed yet. It's the only answer that makes sense.

Negative warning? Really? "We're sorry, but you're not standing still and letting Ragna beat you down hard enough. Please refrain from further running away."

This raises an interesting point now, actually - I don't think it's worth starting rounds with 22A anymore; The reward on normal hit is total garbage, the reward on CH has gone down a lot, and the potential loss if someone holds 9 at the start of the round and hits you with a CH jump in when you whiff your 22A is just as ugly as it always was. I don't think starting rounds with 22A is a smart move except maybe very rarely. It seems like the only really good options now are to run away and charge (against aggressive characters) or to immediately attempt to apply pressure (against zoning type characters.). Starting the round with 22A or 214B (which used to have some value as well) no longer seems worth pursuing.

Huh, so it guard points the attack? Interesting. >files that away for future reference<

Duh, she has an unblockable! that's some OP **** right there!

Well, you can still do them meaty on his wakeup, since Kishuu isn't frame 1 invulnerable, it's just important to note that "when you can" qualifier. The timing is a little bit tricky for Hakumen, since if he does kishuu too early you can hit him when he cancels into Enma (or during his recovery frames if he doesn't cancel) because that is "just" low profile and will get hit by 22D. I've got no help for this one though, it just sucks.

And by the same token, if they're always hitting you, it's probably because of something you're doing, like always trying to jump in after blocking one ground chain, or something like that.

Well, then I feel less bad about being a walking ball of germs. When do we want to try again?

I'm not arguing, I'm just perplexed. It always worries me when the game doesn't work like the people who made it say it's supposed to.

I'm not going to make it. I'm sick, and no one wants to be in an enclosed space with me and my mucus. -_-

Mashing 5A (or even 2A, but 5A is better now) will stuff wolf-shenanigans if he keeps trying to do weird dash cancels and stuff to maintain momentum. Once he starts playing for real though, mashing is a bad idea. x.x Sometimes you can surprise him with 623C if he's flying around as a high altitude wolf, which they sometimes do. This is another character IIRC, like Rachel, where you can extend combos with 236C>214B>22B after a 22C ender. (Assuming you haven't prorated too much) This means you can get good corner carry even with ghetto no charge stuff - 5BB > 5CC > 22C > 236C > 214B > 22B style. As Kiba more or less said, Valk is pretty bad on defense - and actually Kiba - does Valk 6A WORK vs our 6A? It says it only has guard point against Head/Body and Tsu 6A also has foot. Or maybe guardpoints are backwards from invulnerability, where if you have guardpoint vs an attribute, it doesn't matter what other attributes the attack has? That'd make guardpoint pretty strong. But anyway, that nonsense aside, Valk has an average jab and a weak anti-air (2C has no head invulnerability anymore, so it's comparatively harder for him to AA you. I guess he could use 6A as well, but if you can bait that it's -17) so you can afford to be relatively free with your pressure. If you're above him in the air, you should be relatively okay for air-to-air as well, but you probably won't be able to get there unless you've already got him on the defensive. Anything he does while in wolf-dash is considered an air normal, and therefore only has Head attribute, so stuff like 2C and 214X will beat these options, but watch for the ol' "land right in front of you and go for [w]5A" trick. It's probably also still beneficial to try to occasionally use 236C/D to remind him that he can't block in wolf form and can't just run around at ground level, but apparently he can use some kind of wolf cancel to dodge this (see about 7:22 here); Not sure WTF that's about, because it looks like 236C went into recovery as if it had made contact, but it didn't? o.O Can probably use 236C>214D to stuff this though, because he'll be airborne. (That's a pretty good reference vid overall, actually)

Except the data says it has 24F of blockstun, so it should be 10+17-24=3, which should result in throws and jabs and whatever getting counterhit. On the other hand, the non-followup version gives you 10+21-24=7, which is the startup time of a throw.

Bringing this back up again because I was nosing around the frame data, and the FOLLOWUP version of 214D is supposed to hit in 17 frames, which should rule out any ridiculous throw shenanigans. If we're getting thrown out of it, that almost makes it seem like the game isn't using the "followup" version when you cancel a D move into a D move on block? I'd love to be able to test this, but most of the time there isn't enough difference between the moves for it to be testable. @_@ Just going to add it to my queue of things that make me think ArcSys didn't even QA Tsubaki's data...

I have no idea how I did not know this. -_- Erm. Anyway. With the reduced level on 5C, there's no (dis)advantage to doing 6C after 5C as opposed to 5B or 5BB.

Is this a good idea? With the reduced level of 5C, there's now a 7 frame gap between 5C and 6C, which is an imminently mashable window. 5CC > 6C is safer, at only 5 frames. Didn't we determine that 5BB is an auto-frametrap now? /raise :P

Oh, interesting. So the frame data IS right when it says D moves can cancel into other moves on hit or block. That helps a little bit anyway. The reward is still pretty rotten though, since CH 22A doesn't really produce much damage anymore, and if they just block you are in for a lot of hurt. =/ It would really be nice if ANY of our specials were safe on block. -_-