BananaKun

6B no longer ground bounces standing opponents (it will bounce airborne opponents), hence you would use 6B>22A as usual in juggles, but on the ground you're better off doing 6B>5C>2C

Possible 1.1 corner vortex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9zgYweJ_7U

So far it seems Freeze gun RC is still possible, auto super only activates if last bullet hits (so meterless freeze setups may still be possible), the max range blackhole setups work, and according to Jiyuna you can still do corner crossups with teleport as long as you use graviton. There's a small caveat with max range blackhole: since 22B got buffed by reducing the proximity activation range and removing time-out, it affects this setup since it won't trigger if they just sit there and take blackhole. This means you need a different combo that will pull them into the trap.

Chalk it up to people being driven away from playing/practicing against the character as of late. It's common sense but very few people play her competitively in these parts (Pain and Severin?). To be fair though, BB commentators at SCR said a lot of wrong things =( Happens with every game, really.

j.A fuzzy guard instant overhead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l01Sbkr6eI Works on characters with tall standing guard hurtboxes: Azrael, Ragna, Hazama, Hakumen, Relius, Litchi, Valkenhayn, Tager, Nu-13, Mu-12, Noel, Tsubaki. Haven't tested on Terumi/Kagura, don't have them yet :o In 1.1 j.2C is getting some landing recovery + floatiness, which will require j.2C to be hit as close as possible to the ground. Even then it might not be possible anymore, at least meterless. You should be able to RC a j.2C to cancel the landing recovery and then do the j.A though, which would give Kokonoe a cheap instant overhead against most characters even if you have to spend meter for it.

That's one of the big questions, essentially disabling RC on that move would be a huge nerf. I could care less about doing a little more than superball if it's not going to kill the opponent, I want options to maintain my momentum. At the very least though, even if RC is impossible, corner A Superball>6D>236C would give you the freeze as long as you don't have 100 meter.

What kind of testing are you talking about? As far as waiting, we're stuck with the patch until May and won't even get new information until JP arcade release, but knowing more setups for timing blackhole followups is never a bad thing. I've found myself many times with a blackhole outside 22B>3C range, and I would definitely favor doing 2A(w)>236B if I know it works on a certain character, or 22C>3C. I personally don't understand the need to wait. I find that she is an enjoyable character to mess around in training mode with, the patch notes just give you a new set of restrictions you need to work around. Even if none of this works at all I wouldn't have wasted my time since I had my fun figuring out these things. I realize most people aren't concerned with these things, but I share them here just in case. EDIT: Maybe this is better suited for combo discussion? Both the blackhole setups and followups work, but the blackhole setup is obviously motivated by the upcoming patch.

Yes, 2A(w)>236B whiffs against these characters: Taokaka, Makoto, Ragna, Arakune, Tsubaki, Valk, V-13, Bang. As far as I can tell nothing about the timing changes, it's just hitboxes not working in your favor due to 236B not reaching far enough. Maybe there's another setup that can be used for these guys instead, but there's always the 663D>3C route which is fairly easy to hit, but tricky for the bonus damage since you have to time the 3C "manually". 22C>3C for the frame 1 blackhole has no problems on anyone, and maybe 22C>5C could whiff midscreen? Though I have no idea why you would do that. EDIT: I haven't tested this thoroughly or anything, just quick and dirty so I may have just been bad and missed the timing. I haven't tested 22C>Superball.

Assuming this still works, it *barely* got any harder: it went from doing 22B>3C every time to doing several non-airtight steps for the setup into two/three different routes that are similar to 22B>3C in difficulty. I'm not sure why her damage going down is a dealbreaker for doing blackhole setups though? I found those setups to time the bonus damage precisely so that they don't end up being too much work.. advanced input is your friend. The varying recovery post-blackhole is dumb, but if you know about it you can work around it on the fly. As for blockstring setups, they would only work in overdrive mode. In this case you can just do her old setups. Keep in mind the way the blockstring works is that pushback is being negated once the opponent is blocking projectiles, so it's highly unlikely that you'd be far enough even if they instant barrier (that's another problem, variable pushback). Think of scenarios like this: at or close to corner 3C>ODC>6A>6C>9D>Activate>22B>2C(walk back)>6[A]>6D>5C>236B>(setup). Something like this would do 4k+ damage, then a blackhole combo for 6k+. This is going to be scaled down, but for overdrive and 50 meter that's still massive amounts of damage. Not to mention that if they burst they'll still eat like 3k damage + lose burst while you only lose overdrive. Maybe there's a way to go into blackhole setup off 2A/5A as well, just haven't tested this yet. Without 236A>5A, you need a low like 3C/2B with a graviton set, a throw, a 6B, 3C>ODC, maybe even an anti-air 6A combo.

This is super early even for speculation, but I was messing around with some ideas for the new patch and found some interesting setups: Using overdrive to go into max range blackhole setup http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEPKT_SHQkQ Max range blackhole without overdrive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tToSIbREglQ Even if OD blackhole will behave like old blackhole, I would rather go for optimal/near optimal OD combo damage while still getting a guaranteed blackhole reset that doesn't rely on OD being active. There's something weird about blackhole, its recovery varies depending on whether it hits frame 1 or later. The recovery is 1f more when you hit it on the blackhole's 1st active frame as opposed to later in its active frames. Playing around with the frame data it seems like to get bonus damage your attack must hit on frame 47 after recovering for a frame 1 hit, frame 48 otherwise. Ranged frame 47 options: 22C>3C 22C>5C Ranged frame 48 options: 2A(w)>236B 22C>214214C

Tsujikawa mentioned on twitter that OD blackhole will just be old blackhole, so finally some good news It might be hard to get an OD cancel at 100% life and go into blackhole setup off of any starter, but there's so much you can do with Kokonoe once she's in overdrive that people will probably find ways to use this. I messed around with the assumption that blackhole will whiff if you're too close to the corner and came up with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEPKT_SHQkQ You use overdrive here as well, but as long as you do a 3C>9D before OD runs out you will be able to do the setup. As far as I know it's only escapable if you could escape it now. For the blackhole combo, whiff 2A>236B is tight, but can be made consistent with advanced input.

I'm more concerned about the phantom changes now, if this is any indication they might actually be just as bad or worse than her documented changes :O!! (excluding the blackhole nerf of course) No 236A>5A kind of raises a red flag. What makes this ridiculous is Kokonoe's ability to confirm 2A/5A's into 236A>5A for a blackhole setup or her current oki. Nothing extraordinary about this now that corner blackhole setup is gone and her combo rate + oki was nerfed. 3C>236A is really obnoxious to get hit by I guess, so maybe that's why the 5A followup was nerfed? Stuff that might go under the radar but is pretty huge: - Nerfs to 6A recovery/startup/invul frames - Removing foot invul on 6C or moving from 4f to 7f (when she goes airborne) - Whether j.2C will no longer be usable as an IOH because of the "float" they describe - Teleport invul frames/recovery - Increased cooldown on 22B to remove the "blockstring infinite" I think she'll still be very strong, but I guess with arcsys there's always the possibility she'll get neutered.. who knows~ EDIT: Ouch, one example of what 236A>5A nerf would do is 3C>236A goes from ~3400 dmg + oki to ~1700 dmg, no oki.

If you're in a position where you can do something like a 2A>720D then you could go for it. Cancel into the grab when they block it, or use 2A to low profile stuff. It's situational, but still useful. Then when you prove to them you can grab them at any time, you can use the threat of it to scare them into trying to jump or mash DP. I'd much rather go for some kind of confirm into overdrive so they can't burst, but sometimes the chance to Astral arises first. :P

So far the only thing I don't like when playing Kokonoe is that blackhole almost always takes precedence in her gameplan, to the point where it's easy to get tunnel vision and lose out on all the potential setups and shenanigans she can go for. I really like that she has so much potential when playing around with her moveset. Banning blackhole sounds kind of scary.. I will sometimes get blackhole on accident if I'm going for her Astral. I guess I should learn how to 720 the other direction. I glossed over this thread and whoever mentioned Damdai and ST Akuma: Damdai was trying to get HD Remix's Akuma banned because he was tourney legal but still broken after he got toned down. ST Akuma was way worse and has always been banned/soft banned for as long as I can remember.

It's not a true blockstring infinite, blocking the fireball standing and/or IB creates gaps. Still testing if there's an universal option to get out (i.e. not needing a reversal of sorts).

Yes, it's my first BB. I started with Kokonoe because she seemed fun. I'm not arguing the amount of people at all, but you make it sound like it only affects a Kokonoe player if they're not willing to switch (??)

Not that I'm not willing to use other characters, but it does hurt all Kokonoe players. People who were taking her seriously still had to commit a non-trivial amount of time to her, it'll be an obvious handicap if you didn't have alts at the time. It's back to square 1 for me (and many others). Like I said before, I'm fine with the ban. I still find it a bit unsettling, but it sounds like most people are willing to go down this road and it's a community decision, so yeah.

That makes sense, thanks for clearing that up. I tested this rather informally and improvised a situation where kokonoe has 2 frames to act, but I didn't actually verify if the moves I used had correct frame data or if I timed it perfectly..

I tweeted at you, but it's probably better to put it here. The reason why 6C dodges a lot of things is that it's apparently airborne on frame 2 (can't grab her), lower hurtbox removed on frame 4 (foot invul?). It's technically a jumping normal so it should lose to anti-airs consistently. This move dodges tick throws that would normally produce pink throws Maybe someone else can help me verify when you're able to grab her. I was going to make a video but I haven't finished testing it to make sure the properties on it are correct.

There's very good reasons for sharing information like I mentioned, it's a common and well explored school of thought in many competitive hobbies, disciplines, etc. It just so happens the opposite is very, very popular in fighting games (STSFN for lack of a better term), and while it's not necessarily wrong, making a conscious effort to avoid this is probably good for helping smaller communities like these grow and improve, including oneself. Anyway, this will definitely derail the topic. I'd be happy to reply to talk about it, just not in this thread. Back on this, information on Kokonoe should NOT be lacking. It's not digested and broken down as easily as possible, but the match video thread here is fairly comprehensive, my youtube channel (as well as some others) contain a lot of videos regarding her tech. To the best of my knowledge, everything that's been found about her is public domain, just do some searching. I'd be lying if I denied the possibility of someone finding some "secret tech" with her and was hiding it, but I think the most important aspects of all her tech is covered already.

I'm definitely not one of those, I feel it's damaging to not freely share information in smaller communities like these. Did you just say Kokonoe AND Noel top 8 as a big problem to solve? The main issue with this is that all of these criteria you can freely interpret what any of these mean. Overpowered, too much control, too good, easy to abuse are perceived differently by everyone.

Yeah and I wouldn't be surprised if that continued being the case, I just think at worst this implies Rachel-Kokonoe is as bad as Tsujikawa makes it look to be once other Kokonoes catch up whether it's 6-4 or 7-3 or 8-2 or w/e. Kokonoe is without a doubt the best, she needs a nerf. That still only makes the argument for banning her that "it'll make the game better", not that matches vs Koko are nigh unwinnable and thus she should obviously be removed. The closest banning on these grounds was to succeeding is Meta Knight in Brawl, and even that didn't succeed for very long (people are playing MK at Apex as we speak). I do think that practicing against her and studying her blockstrings as well as how to mitigate/escape her blackhole stuff when possible goes a long way. I know that's not what people want to hear, but all I can do is help people out with that in the meantime.

Let's not forget Tsujikawa is a god, too. I agree though, 10-3 is a beating. I'd just like to see them play again and see how they've both adjusted.

IDK about accurately assessing the matchup, 6-4 is just easier to say than "Kokonoe still wins more than Rachel, but Rachel can win against Kokonoe more than Ragna or Jin could". Her worst matchup? Depends TBH.. there's always Valk and Mu is worth mentioning as well. I'm surprised I forgot to mention Mu, she's actually the most trouble I've had so far, although my only Rachel experience is on a 1 bar connection.

I meant 6-4 Kokonoe..