Airk

This is a super low bar though, considering that she was BEYOND TERRIBLE in CS1, and bottom tier in CSE. So basically all you've said is "they boosted her out of absolute crap tier." Let's put it this way - they keep refusing to give her anything honestly strong (and taking away anything that gets close). Pretty much all of the characters in this game who are good have something where people can say "Crap! <character X>'s <thing Y> is really mean!". The sentence for Tsubaki should PROBABLY read: "Crap! Tsubaki's pressure is really mean!" except that it's NOT because her normals are such garbage. As far as I'm concerned, she's basically the same as Makoto except: A) Makoto doesn't need to fill up a special magic bar to do actual damage B) Tsubaki has a couple of tools that help her in neutral if she manages to fill up the special magic bar. Otherwise, they're both characters who have to win on sheer, raw, "I play this game so much better than you that the fact that your character has tons of advantages over mine doesn't matter." skill. It's all well and good to say "If Tsubaki has the resources available, she can blow you up!" when they keep making it harder for her to get those resources. I mean, it's not as if she's got some sort of Hakumen "I just need overdrive to make a comeback!" thing going on. Usually it's more like "I just need overdrive! and 50 meter! A strong starter! and at least one charge!" Yeah. Is she actually the worst in the game? No. I think that honor goes to her 'Super mode', Izayoi. Is she in the bottom 5 in my opinion. Yup.

If you never want to take it apart again, you want something like this If you want to someday be able to take those nuts off, you should probably just put a blob of hot glue from a glue gun on each of them - that stuff usually peels off okay if you attack with a knife.

This is because with Tsubaki, she usually is. :P She's managed, by some accounts, to claw her way out of C tier for this game, except that I'd argue she has basically the same problems Platinum does - tools needed not always available, normals weak. It's almost like Arc doesn't understand that characters that CAN'T use their drive exactly how they want whenever they want need to either have drives that are MARKEDLY BETTER than the people who can, or need to have better normals to compensate. This stuff doesn't seem like rocket science, but routinely eludes them.

Can actually go as high as +4, I believe; You've got 24 frames of blockstun, and only 20 frames of recovery, so if you hit with the absolute last active frame, 24-20=+4

I vote that in the future we only list matches where Tsubaki is actually allowed to play.

The problem is that the very things that make her 'good' for a newbie make her BAD later. Or rather, they prevent you from learning what you need to be good. You DESPERATELY NEED strong hitconfirm skills to play Tsubaki competitively. If you can't reliably get 5B > jc > j.BB etc and 5B (CH) > 6C down, you're in a LOT of trouble and those are -not- easy. Similarly, while her early combos are super easy, going beyond that at all leads you into character-specific-combo hell. And even if you get over those hurdles, the actual payoff is comparatively low because her tools just aren't strong at high levels.

I kind agree with Kiba - while Jin is mean in neutral, his mixup really isn't that scary until he gets 50 meter, at the least. You can just kinda downback a lot of stuff and anti-air him if he tries jump shenanigans. This guy loves his gimmicky resets. You can compensate for that by holding 4AB whenever you're frozen. (Can you tech with AB in this game?) That will save you from both Crush Trigger resets and air-unblockable resets because as soon as the ice breaks, you'll be barrier guarding. Though it looks like you might've figured that out later on. If you are having trouble anti-airing him, you can mix things up by jumping to meet him with an air throw - this can catch him off guard if he's expecting you to try to 2C him (again). Your pressure could definitely stand some work; Even just going for pressure reset after 2B would help, and 5B > 6B is something you should add as well as the jab pressure Kiba suggests. You often seemed to do 236D or [4]6D>236D from max range, and he basically just neutral jumped you and hit you in the face. Don't do this. It's okay to throw these out 'at random' a little, but you shouldn't do it when your opponent is at the far side of the screen. 2/3rds screen at most so there's at least a chance they're -doing- something when you do it. You got 'ducked' and your j.C whiffed a couple of times. Try to do it a little deeper - if he's going to AA you, it's gonna be with something slow, so you don't have to worry about doing it 'high' like you do on characters who can 5A AA. Practice the ol' 5B(B) jump cancel on air hit hit confirm (okay, sorry, that sentence was a train wreck). It sucks, but it's important. More command grabs would be good. uh. Enough stream of watchingness from me.

Never said there was. Uh, the problem here is that what you are proposing is basically "Don't change Hakumen's power level, he's fine, he just needs to be better in exchange for doing less damage." which, I don't think is true. If he trades some of his outrageous damage for better options, he's still too strong unless the options he gains aren't "good enough" to make up for the loss of damage. Sophisticat: I did read that post. I don't really agree with it. 6A and 6B were -4 in Extend as well, so how can them being -4 now be a nerf? (I have to assume you're talking about 6A and 6B because there is no 4B that I can find.) Half the rest of the stuff you list applies to the whole cast, so no big deal there. Yeah, losing 2B as plus on block hurts, but I'm otherwise not really feeling your pain here. Your specials are still really good and you can use more of them than ever, plus you have 'get in for free' in the form of agito, which again, would be a perfectly fine move if it 'only' worked like everyone else's tricky anti-anti-air maneuver by tampering with his jump trajectory, but no, it's instead specifically designed to beat anti-airs by being the only jump move in the game that has FOOT property, in a game where they clearly went to great pains to clean up stupid property usage, and which leads into Bad Things on CH and is pretty much utterly safe? Fix Agito, fix combo rate, and uh, I guess lower the star gain since that's what they're doing, and he seems perfectly fine as a CP character to me.

Do bullet points help? Your EX comparison is bad and irrelevant, because in EX his massive damage took huge amounts of meter, was relatively constrained as to what starters it could come from, and could be ruined by a burst. All of these have been 'fixed' for CP. His non-OD damage is way better than extend, as far as I can tell and he has more stars to do it with because of faster star gain. Agito is stupid There's no reason for him to be 'outside the rules' with regard to combo rate. It just leads into his normal combos doing excessive damage. When a game has systems, you should use them. We clear now? The only thing wrong with my argument is that I insisted on addressing your point about Mugen in EX.

Pretty much all of them. He has: A 5 frame 5A (Most characters don't). That works as an anti air. And while his 5A doesn't hit crouches (like most 5 frame 5As) he also has... A 6 frame 2A - as fast as most characters' 5A, and +1 on block, while pretty much everyone else's +on block jabs were nerfed after CS2 because +on block jabs are dumb An 8 frame startup, +2 on block 5B. +2. On 5B. A very long range 2B which lowers his hitbox significantly and is only -1 on block. A crazy good anti air 2C - puts pre-nerf Tsubaki 2C to shame. Leads into hilarious damage. Jump cancellable on block. Pretty much everything you could want in an anti-air 2C A 22 frame overhead. Yeah, great, low reward unless you have 50 meter. Whoopee. Solid 6A for +1 on block that moves him forward. Okay, fine 6C isn't anything really special. Good thing something isn't. :P 3C that's pretty much safe on block and leads into LOLDAMAGE on CH and low profiles... j.B with tremendous air to air hitbox j.2C as an excellent air to ground with hilariously good crossup capabilities. Nearly every one of his normals is exemplary. Very few of them have any meaningful weaknesses. He has more plus on block normals than anyone else in the game (unless you count full charge Hakumen 4C. :P) and most of his moves are very quick. Basically, he's a hilarious movement semi-zoning character who has the kinds of normals you want on a rushdown character, and that the actual rushdown characters in the game don't have. This is, of course, made even sillier by his selection of specials (Really? An overhead that moves him forward a ton to maintain pressure and is plus on block?) but if you gave Tsubaki equivalently good normals, she'd immediately jump from Low B tier to mid A tier just because her mixup and pressure would be SO MUCH better. But Hazama gets these on top of everything else - crazy movement, ability to zone, explosive damage, etc. It's not that his normals are 'godlike' in some way, but they are MUCH better than a character with all his other advantages should have. Basically, Hazama has ALL the advantages. Because why? I don't know.

And lo, as if by magic, his combos fall down to the level of damage he SHOULD be doing. What's the problem again, exactly? Really? You're going to use Mugen combos as the reason he was strong in EX? Frankly, if Hakumen has 8 stars, with his lower rate of star gain compared to CP, and managed to turn a hit into a Mugen combo AND your opponent didn't just burst it and make you waste all your stars, good on you, but that's about as silly as accusing Tsubaki of being really good because she could 8k or something with 100% heat 5 charge install combo. Good on you if you can make it happen. People hate him in CP because there's no reason for him to work the way he does. There's no reason for him to get an air special that breaks all the rules for how air specials work (if anyone can find me another air move that has body and foot properties, I will eat my hat, and no, things like Litchi's j.2D[m] don't count - she's on the ground when she does the attack with the foot property.) Agito doesn't even have any business being a projectile, nevermind any of the other stuff. So he gets in for free because who wants to risk getting CH by something that seems explicitly designed to beat anti-air moves? Winning? Nah. Under any circumstances in which he has a burst and low health, he can pretty much completely kill you from any of half a dozen or more starters. And you CAN'T burst that. This isn't even Tager level "welp, you got caught in a 720, sucks to be you" because there are so many ways he can kick that off. Hakumen had some stuff in Extend where you'd look at it and go "I don't really understand why that is so good, but okay, I guess". Hakumen in CP has a bunch of stuff where you look at it and say "WTFBBQ? Really?! Why did anyone think it was okay for any character to do that?!" A character doesn't have to be "unbeatable" to piss people off and make them want him nerfed.

He just needs to stop being exempt from the rules of the game with regard to damage scaling. Seriously. Having his specials ignore character combo rate is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. It's tantamount to having a character that has 12k health but for some reason doesn't die until he hits -3k. Not only does it result in the character having a ridiculous advantage, but it breaks the system in a way that provides no meaningful benefit. If you wanted him to do lots of damage, you should just use the system to make him do lots of damage, not kludge around it like that. Fix that. If it's not a bug it should be. Combos off a 5C should be pretty devastating, but Hakumen's 5C isn't, in and of itself, any better than 'most characters' (Same proration as Ragna's 5C, or Bullet's 5C, or Platinum's 5C.) Though I think someone seriously needs to go through and look at the normals on the characters who aren't doing very well. While the fact that Amane/Izayoi/Tsubaki/Makoto all have worse-than-average proration on their 5C probably isn't the -cause- of them not being strong, it sure isn't helping either. Why are characters who are already at the bottom of the power heap stuck with inferior normals compared to the likes of Hazama and Valk? Secret tip for Arc Sys: If you give a character crazy movement options, maybe they shouldn't have better normals than the rest of the cast. In fact, maybe they should >gasp< have LESS GOOD normals.

SuperTager does cost 100 heat though.

I'm totally behind this as long as it only works on Hazama. (And Terumi, I guess.)

The problem with all this hypothetical talk about whether we should make complicated characters stronger to compensate for the work they put in (answer: no) is that right now, we have characters like Izayoi, Amane and Tsubaki, who have all kinds of unnecessary weird difficulty that results in them just being plain old unreliable, and then we have characters like Jin, who is about as far from complicated as you get and is still absurdly strong. So let's save the "is it okay for complicated characters to be stronger than the rest of the cast" debate for when we we can make characters that even live up to their supposed design goals. ;P

Thanks for this! I have an acquaintance or two who like to mess around in this mode, so knowing how it has changed from CS is nice.

Well, fully half the point of the trip is eating, so I'll see what I can do.

This does indeed look super useful, thanks!

I'm going to be in Tokyo for a bit in about two weeks, and in between all the eating and wandering around, I daresay there will be time for me to hit some arcades. So where should I go? Obviously, I'll want to play some BB, but other things are fun too, so general recommendations would be awesome as well as the 'here is where you can go to get personally destroyed by player X' stuff.

What kind of 'options' do people think he realy needs? I mean, he got the stupidest new move in the game this time out in the form of Agito, and it costs ONE bleeping star and basically lets him jump in for free, since it completely screws normal anti-airs due to it's mysterious Head/Body/Foot/Projectile/WTF status and his ground approach is fine, especially since he can play super patient 95% of the time. I don't see how he's doing the 'same damage for more stars' than extend, either, since you sure didn't see 6k off 3C CH in Extend. Really? 6K off an 8 frame low? =( Yeah, that's the most egregeious example, but if all these combos are costing him so many stars, why are they listed as 'stars gained' in the combo thread? :P I dunno. His overall damage seems to still be very high even discounting his insane overdrive stuff. And it's not like he has some sort of huge disadvantage to offset the fact that he does tons of damage. Maybe if his rate of star gain wasn't so insane that he ends combos with more than he started with he'd be a "burst damage" character, because he wouldn't be able to do that same damage again immediately if he hits you again, but as is, his star gain rate is way too high for him to be a "Burst damage" character. He doesn't even need to DO anything to get stars other than not flagrantly waste them in neutral, which is hardly a problem.

So, basically: Nothing about Hakumen justifies his moves inexplicably breaking the rules for how much damage they do. Check.

Er, why do we think they're changing the command grab motion? The change notes say something to the effect of 'charge command move changed to a normal command' - meaning that our 'charge move' ([4]6C/D) is getting a new motion, not the command grab. Command grab motion makes a lot of sense, since it starts at towards, where you're going to be if you dashed in. Edit: Anyway, no, there was some speculation in the gameplay thread, but no one came up with any convincing ideas.

Uh, no? Hakumen has many things that make his game method BETTER than Terumi's and additionally, unlike Terumi, ALL his special moves require meter, not just a "big selection of super moves". And sorry, but saying "Hakumen doesn't have that many specials" (what? He has 7. Jin only has 6 - 8 if you count D versions as different moves. Rachel only has 6 if you count her two different 'lotus' moves as different.) - Hakumen has a completely average number of specials. And ignoring that entirely, he gets 3-4k off combos that last about 2 seconds. Anything that can lead into Zantetsu basically picks up 2k damage instantly. That's just not right.

What about if 2D ONLY caught lows, so that you actually kinda had to guess on wakeup? Note: I'm not trying to get Hakumen's counters nerfed. Hakumen needs nerfs, but it's mostly the incredibly idiotic amounts of damage he does. (Remind me again why his special moves are all insanely good and ignore combo rate?) But mostly I just like saying "What do you think about idea X?"

I dunno, but it's actually kindof an interesting idea to: A) Return Hakumen's counters to Extend status. B) Have them cost 1 star to use C) Have them give TWO stars on hit (So the same net amount of stars as normal.)