Airk

I really don't enjoy the Bullet matchup either; It doesn't seem bad (except for her goddamn 2B) until she gets a heat up level (which is virtually impossible to prevent unless you never get hit) and then it's "Hooray my drives are all plus on block (or at least even) and if I hit you with them I get 4k+" It also generally seems that she's way more capable of getting damage at max range on her normals. I would FAR rather fight, say, Ragna than Bullet.

People stopped bringing BB setups. =/

I'm going to repeat myself for the umpteenth time here: Tsubaki does not need or even WANT "new options" Tsubaki needs for the options she has (she has a LOT) to be useful.

I thought it was obvious that I didn't mean everyone should actually HAVE a 5-5 matchup with Ragna, but rather that Ragna's power level was where I'd like to see the cast. :P (Read: Basically what lots of people are saying: That the A- to B+ tier range is the 'healthy' one. It's also where a large portion of the cast already is, which is convenient because it means you have to radically alter fewer characters.)

See, you're doing it wrong. "We don't know" means that all the loktest changes COULD have stuck... but WE DON'T KNOW. So ANY attempt to reach a conclusion, whether that conclusion is "All the loktest changes stuck" or "some of the loktest changes stuck" or "none of the loktest changes stuck" is... premature. Because we don't know. Just...stop thinking about it for two weeks and let the actual release of the game answer your questions. It's not like knowing would do you any good. I personally suggest just expecting the worst so you can be pleasantly surprised. But remember: We don't know what will be changing.

I expect doom and gloom, so anything that doesn't suck will be a pleasant surprise. Anyway, if that's the reason they nerfed 5BB, that's BS, because as usual, that's something that would've been TOTALLY OKAY on most other characters, but is inexplicably an "OH NO! Tsubaki might get something STRONG!" for Tsu. Lame.

Lessons, Colloseum Silent (I think) and Sealed Gate. NOTHING. Seriously. NOTHING IS KNOWN. There was one loktest that gave useless info that has doubtless been changed by now.

I dunno; I was watching LK vs SKD from GUTS3 the other day, and even with LK being kinda rusty with Valk, there was no blocking the wolf mixup. The only way wins got had was by winning at neutral. Anyway, 5-5 vs Ragna is about where I'd like to see everyone, and I don't HONESTLY believe they're going to nerf him meaningfully. Remember - you're going off information from ONE nonsense loktest.

I'm not entirely sure a character with unblockable mixup really needs to be able to kill his opponent in three combos....

Speaking of Unlimited Characters. Pet Peeve: Finally finding a room that you have a decent connection to, and the dude is all "Imma gonna pick Unlimited Hakumens, lolz!" F-off. I'm not interested in screwing around with Unlimited characters. I want to play the game. Edit: Oh, and yeah, I'm totally with Zouf - more than 3 slots and I don't know why people do it. Why does NO ONE use the free-for-all-room setting? Are they too dumb to notice it's there? 8 slot rooms in match/spectate make me want to stab someone.

Except that the CP engine explicitly disallows long combos. At least, for certain definitions of "long".

Except me, of course; Whatever other people may do or say, I am NOT a hypocrite about this sort of thing. I didn't even import CP - I played Extend all the way to CP U.S. release. Actually a week or two after, because I didn't even pay for not-on-the-slow-boat shipping for my copy of CP.

They have buffed bad characters - Izayoi benefitted quite a bit from 1.1 I think. And Rachel didn't stay stuck at CS1 tier, nor did Tsubaki. And you mentioned Bullet as well. It's not that they NEVER do this. Anyway, I'm just sortof saying that saying "Azrael is fine and needs no changes" is basically tantamount to saying "Azrael should be top tier forever!" because it doesn't look very likely that they're going to bring the rest of the cast up to that level. Therefore, I think it's more appropriate to say "No, Azrael needs changes if he's going to be in line with the rest of the cast."

Honestly, I don't know what they changed that causes this - it might be the removal of the 5BB step forward - I just know that this combo wasn't a problem in earlier iterations of the game. Actually, that spawns an honest question; Why would you not use 236A ALL the time in this combo? You'd only be losing a tiny bit of damage (the BASE damage difference between these two moves is 100, and after 4 normals beforehand it's going to be more like 50); I guess the reduced hitstun on 236A could theoretically make 214B harder to connect, but there's still a couple of frames of leeway and it's just a mashable cancel anyway, so... why not use 236A all the time if it compensates for spacing issues? Or are there situations in which it doesn't work?

They're NEVER going to bring the whole cast up to Azrael level; Using him as the balancing point is unrealistic. He should be changed, because clearly they are afraid of making most characters that power level.

You drop that combo because Arc Sys NERFED that combo because it'd be waaay too easy for our stuff to work at anything beyond point blank range... :P

Man, I just want to say that watching Level5-chan against LK in GUTS3 losers' semis was HILARIOUS. I'm going to stop short of actually accusing L5chan of playing WELL, but it was tons of fun to watch.

Good to see that Arc is still preferential and are fixing useless normals on OTHER characters...

The basic differences, IMHO, are that american sticks tend to have bat tops, and much more resistance, whereas japanese sticks use ball tops and require less force.

Really? I was under the impression that Ragna was still pretty solid in CP. Or is it only in 1.1 where people think he's "not good"?

Yeah, I think Pikuri is really earning his spot on the notable players list lately. He's really on point and just blowing people up. (Also, -I- thought the Festival-O'-DP's in the Ragna match was awesome.)

Best.

2B isn't hard to meaty with because it's slow. It's only a tiny bit slower than 5B, and you have tons of time to meaty on a neutral tech. It's hard to meaty with because it has relatively few active frames, so you need to be more precise, but it's not really any harder than, say, meaty 5C. It's just different timing.

What meaty did you do? B Vivace is frame 1 invulnerable to Body and Head attacks, so lots of stuff just won't hit him.

You've confused me here. You sound like you disagree with my last paragraph, and then go on to agree with me? Maybe I wasn't clear: I don't really think we gain anything from adding new characters at this point. And no, the "Ooooh, look, another character!" hype doesn't qualify from my perspective, because it doesn't add anything to the long term health of the game. I think people's idea of the "value" in a fighting game is seriously messed up. Also, re Vermiloni's: "Balance is important but it doesn't make having fun while playing any less important." - Uhm...Hi? Balance is important BECAUSE IT MAKES IT EASIER TO HAVE FUN. Acting from the assumption that everyone wants to feel like if they had just played better, they would have won, instead of "Yeah, I got knocked down once into a lightning trap that kept me from seeing any further mixups so I was basically guessed to death". Balance yo. It makes games better.