Airk

No, I'm pretty sure what they're talking about is this section from the "system changes": So...yeah. Some weird new thing. -_- Edit: Erm, also, I notice that there isn't actually anything IN the compiled thread about Tsubaki's super losing invulnerability.

That pretty much sums up my feelings, with greater weight of experience and accuracy. Thank you.

Well, if they sucked less, you'd use them more often. I don't see how "you shouldn't be doing that often, so making it an even worse idea to do it isn't a nerf" makes sense. Also, I'm not A) Talking about wakeup and B) understanding how a move with 10 startup frames and less invulnerability is usable in "just the same window" as a move with 5 startup frames and invulnerabiltiy until the first active frame. If you're doing your reversal properly, which you should be since it (used to be) invulnerable until it hits, getting blocked isn't really a problem. And "using up all your charges" probably just equates to 3, max. It's not like you're running around at full charge all the time so you can waste it on this. Or if you are managing to be at full charge all the time, it's not a big deal to get it back. :P Well, you'll see even less of it now, since apparently they're nerfing Counter Assaults in the current Loktest. -_- To some extent, I disagree. What you should be doing is remembering what you did when you actually DO get punished on block. If people don't punish you, or you don't actually get blocked, then feel free to keep it up until you find some reason not to. Yes, this means if you play a ton of scrubs, you'll learn more slowly, but frankly, I don't think playing a ton of scrubs is going to be a great learning experience either way. Besides, you may not even know you could've been punished on block if your move hits/doesn't get punished so learning from those experiences is...difficult. Right, so why should we shrug when we're told that one of our options now has even more risk? Because it wasn't always the best choice before? I know I for one was hoping for MORE options for using moves outside combos, not less.

I kindof disagree with your assessment. Yes, that'll be the best/only way to use it NOW, but since they had apparently added more invincibility earlier, it would have been a very nice reversal. Reversals are HANDY. Not just when waking up either, but for breaking up blockstrings. When you have something that starts as fast as that move does and has good invulnerability, it makes people have to respect you on defense. Losing the invincibility is, to me, extremely unfortunate. 623A has twice the startup of the super, and is just inferior in this regard. I for one am very sad to see this go. I think it SUCKS to have yet ANOTHER move that is basically designated "never use outside of combos". I think that's rotten.

See, I think this is an unreasonable assumption. How many changes in the loktest lists for ANY character said stuff like "2B hitbox is bigger" or "6A hitbox fixed"? None that I can recall. In fact, the word "hitbox" has been essentially absent from the change lists. Of all the parts of the game that I can feel confident in saying we have absolutely no bleeding idea whether they changed anything, hitboxes are it. This isn't exactly the sort of thing that you notice while you're fighting. It's entirely possible they fixed a ton of stuff, but the stuff that gets listed in these changelogs (in addition to being nigh incomprehensible thanks to the language/terminology barrier) is ONLY stuff that people can notice while they're basically screwing around with the game. Basing any sort of serious analysis about technical aspects off it is a really bad idea.

This one confuses me. Not in a "what do they think they're doing?" way, but in a "what the heck does this even mean?" way. 3CC is her slide and launcher. How can it not be followed up with no gauge? She doesn't even have moves for attacking airborne opponents from the ground? Bwuh? My brain.

Yeah, it's getting kinda stupid. 5B is already her best normal. Stop buffing it! It doesn't need help! It's all the REST of her normals that need to be better.

EVERYTHING in this thread may not be true. What you're getting is translations of random people who may or may not even be telling the truth about an experience they may or may not understand or parse correctly. It's not like ArcSys is posting a changelog or something. Basically, take everything you read here as a big "maybe."

There are two seperate Valkenhayn sections.

What I do, and it seems to work, though I think I have slow hands is basically, I input all the motions in one smooth stream. There's very little 'visual feedback' - I definitely DO NOT wait for the 214 to come out before I start inputting the 22x. Sometimes I end up doing it a little too fast and the 214x gets skipped and I go straight from the 236 to the 22, but as mentioned, that's not really a huge crisis. Maybe that is helpful, maybe it is not.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything; The only thing a "combo ender" needs is minimum damage, which does scale with charges. The point is though, that it's a terrible use of charges for the damage unless you're using it to end a Mugen combo (yay, 100 heat.)

The actual damage numbers are really depressing. I wonder if they REALIZE that it combo scales with itself to such terrible numbers? -_-

Only the first POTENTIAL frame of extreme pain. It's not invincible until it hits, just until it starts up - 720 has several active frames. And my point is that that's just how the invincibility on 236236D works. It just has other things that bring it down. Okay, that's terrible. -_- I didn't even think of that.

True, but as a reversal, that's somewhat less relevant. Not saying this is useful vs Tager, mind you, this just happens to be the thread that spurred the thought.

Eh? Tager Frame Data lists the 720 as 5+0 - that's to say, it takes 5 frames to start up, then super flashes, THEN it's instant and unescapable...but that's that same as Tsubaki's 236236D. The only difference I'm seeing from the data is that A) Tager has 1 less frame of invincibility (whatever) and can hold for more active (but vulnerable) frames. Well, that and it's a throw (With the attendant 100% guaranteed damage) and isn't dependent some special magic gauge to actually do damage. (Fun fact: Tsubaki's 236236D at full charge does 50 more damage than Tager's 720. :P Assuming you don't combo into it.)

yup. On all counts. I remain a little bit baffled by how LITTLE a lot of her moves pick up by using a charge. I am given vague hope by the fact that there were no (reported) changes for Tsubaki in Loctest 4. This means that either: A) No one with any clue about Tsubaki played her during this loctest (supports the 'we have no idea what they changed' hypothesis) B) They completely gave up on trying to improve her and just threw up their hands a week early (seems unlikely, considering.) or C) They're pleased with what they accomplished, and feel she's balanced against the rest of the cast. (_also_ supports the 'we have no idea what they changed' hypothesis. Amoung other things.) So this obviously doesn't mean the world will magically be a good and happy place, and there will probably be some issues remaining, but whether those issues will be crippling compared to the new, less powerful overall roster is far from decided.

Well, Everyone except Rachel is getting the nerfstick for BBCS2, so just the fact that Tsubaki isn't going DOWN means she goes up by comparison. Though I admit, I'm confused and annoyed by the 22D changes. Regarding her being rushed, it's POSSIBLE, but I don't think saying that "she has different versions of the same move" is in any way proof, because even if you ignore the differences between her move versions entirely, she has basically the same number of moves as most of the cast. (Assuming that you -also- discount the different button versions of everyone else's moves. Fair is fair. Rachel doesn't have 3 Ttiny Lobelias, she has 1, etc). I do think there was a certain lack of planning involved however. Even theoryfighting should indicate that if a character has to sacrifice to fill a gauge, then using that gauge should give GREATER (not the same) rewards than other characters that DON'T have to sacrifice to use their Drive. This is not rocket science. I'm still sticking to the assertion that we actually known jack damn nothing about the changes that were made, because I don't think they were tested by people would would recognize them. Heck, some of the "information" we do have it outright self contradictory. It's hard to believe that Arc is, in fact, THAT clueless.

This. I mean, she functionally doesn't exist. People can't notice changes in something they don't understand in the first place. The lack of "changes" to her isn't a lack of changes, it's a lack of people's ability to tell what is going on with her. I don't think people even have a thorough understanding of the most basic basics of her gameplay yet, nevermind "subtle" changes like the ones that are going on in these tests. Anyway, yeah. Sticking with Tsubaki. Loyalty and stuff. Plus, I can't get over Platinum's design anyway. @_@

Eh. Feel free to be pessimistic if you want, but your own statements turn back on themselves a little bit. To be precise, since "no one in Japan plays her" we have, essentially ZERO accurate data about what happened in the loctest. Do you really expect some random guy who is screwing around with the game to be able to even tell you if most of the changes you want in that list happened? I sure don't. Hell, I wouldn't even be able to tell you most of that stuff if _I_ had a chance to screw around with the loctest, because, well, I wouldn't be using her crap specials, so I wouldn't be able to tell if they were improved. I wouldn't be randomly throwing out D button attacks so I wouldn't be able to tell if they still left her at disadvantage on block, etc. I don't think that, fundamentally, she's all that difficult to balance. Theoryfighting gets you 75% of the way there. Does that mean they'll do it? no, of course not, but acting all upset about this incomplete by your own definition list of changes that may or may not even be final just doesn't seem a good use of pessimism. That said, why all the hope for Platinum? Just because Valk came out strong? I expect Plat to suck for that very reason.

Wait... wasn't Loctest 3 BEFORE they announced their intent to give everyone an air unblockable? I also don't see anything in the Loketest3 summary about Tsubaki's 5C becoming air unblockable. Got a link or anything? I feel like I'm missing something. Yes yes, I understand the point of jumping out, but Tsubaki has weak mixup and very loose blockstrings, so she seems like one of the opponents that people would be least concerned about needing to jump out of. More importantly though, changing 5B wouldn't HELP with this, unless you're just suggesting that people are jumping out of your blockstrings before you even start them? I thought the whole point of this change was to keep people from jumping out mid-string? Again, this isn't how I understand it's supposed to work. The idea I had was not that you were supposed to "poke" people with the attack, but that it was supposed to tighten the blockstring because if someone tried to jump out of that particular attack, they would instead get hit because there's a tiny window before they can air barrier. There's no way you could use it as a responsive poke, because the "no air barrier" window is like 3 frames or something? I think we have two different ideas of what this change is supposed to do. Edit: I got my impression that this was supposed to stop MID BLOCKSTRING jumpouts by the fact that people were talking about how it's not possible to jump WHILE barrier guarding anymore. I assume that if someone is barrier guarding, that they're already blocking.

Where are you getting this info from? All I've seen about this stuff is that everyone will be getting "some" sort of "air unblockable" normal, not any specifics on what normal that would be for anyone. Though to be honest, what they're trying to do with those doesn't seem that relevant to Tsubaki - the "air unblockable normals" thing is supposed to help stop people jumping out of blockstrings. Who jumps out of a Tsubaki blockstring? :P Anyway, 5c would be the best choice for that purpose (or maybe 5BB) erm...unless they kept that whole "can gatling from 2BB back into 5BB" thing, in which case 5B might be a good choice after all... but either way, it's not going to do what they want it to do, because it only creates ONE spot in the blockstring where people can't jump out. In fact, I fail to see how this change is meaningful for ANYONE, really. Getting ONE attack that can't be airblocked without barrier isn't really going to change the ability of people to jump out.

I think you need to replace Ragna with Bang or something now. Ragna looks like he's gotta get Teh Nerf Stiq. :P Even though he's not top tier. /confused. Anyway, yeah, I'm worried that the changes in the importance of Guard Breaking are going to be bad for Tsubaki because A) It's not like she's got a lot of primers and B) She's incredibly bad at primer breaking unless they've changed something about her moves. (Note: This is not out of the question. I don't really get the feeling we've gotten a particularly comprehensive feel for the changes, and they'll probably throw some more in before final, so for all we know, all D-button special moves could end up breaking primers or something. :P ) But yeah, overall, I don't have a feel for...well, even which changes are still in from earlier loctests, nevermind the overall impact. =/

Did I miss the Litchi and Bang nerfs? Seriously. Where are they? We've been seeing all kinds of hard and fast stuff that seriously brings down characters who were already mid-tier (Poor Lambda, WTF?) but where are the Litchi and Bang specific nerfs? For all the whining I saw the Bang players doing in some of the earlier threads, it doesn't seem he got hit nearly as hard as most of the lower tier people, and there's hardly been anything in the way of changes for Litchi at all. Are they expecting the system changes to somehow hit the top tier people harder? Even if they DO, they're still going to be the top tier thanks to the nerfs on everyone else. I just don't get it.

Can you give examples of oki-type attacks that can be "easily jumped out of"? Seems to me one has to tech first, and that you have vulnerable frames while doing so - I don't think any of the various rolls or techs are jump cancellable? Also, what loctest changes do you feel are "not helping"? Or did you just mean that in the literal sense of "not improving it" rather than the somewhat traditional sense of "actually making it worse"?

That's a fine assertion, but it doesn't support the hyperbolic claims that people like to make such as "BB doesn't have Oki except for Litchi", which are what I hope we can dispel with this discussion. Additionally, another thing that I think is missing from this discussion is that people keep asserting that what makes, for example, Jin's Ice Sword "good" is that it forces block on wakeup (Aside: I fail to see why someone wouldn't just roll out of the way of this). That's true, but only half, or less than half of the reason it's good. Things like Jin's Ice sword, or, moreso, Litchi's super, are good oki because: A) Yes, they force blocking. B) They leave you free to act WHILE they force blocking. Anybody can force blocking with a slow meaty attack (Well, okay, assuming you have an attack that covers a decent area. Tsubaki...kinda doesn't.) but it's not nearly as powerful because there's nothing else you can do WHILE doing that meaty. Ice Sword/Staff Super/Millia's disc are strong because they allow you to do mixup while your opponent is forced to block. This, to me, is way more important than A.