9:02 PM

Saber when? I need this in my life...

Kakyun v. Akuzuki Tager (12 dan) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm25526364 Lots of interesting stuff in our first high level Celica v. Tager set. Kakyun seems to do very well once he starts playing more patient and using 5B/j. C to maintain a favorable spacing. Also worth nothing that backhoe > Rapid almost never gets blocked.

Other Japanese players are reporting that it only works if you're within ~normal throw range. Ky charge stun edge oki still works, so Venom should be fine.

I'd like to know how fast they made her overhead. Her biggest problem (and the problem shared by all of the low tier characters in Persona) is that she has no reliable way to break the opponent's guard. Her throw game isn't scary enough to play an Akihiko bait and punish game, and her AoA is borderline unusable.

It's called a project box, they have a thread for it on SRK tech talk. Doing it with a 360 pad (as far as I know) would require you to do it a little differently since you would just be using the box as a place to keep your dual mod board instead of having it as a modular thing, and pretty much limits you to using a ChimpSMD for the dual mod aspect of it; there are a few different piggyback style boards, but I think the Chimp is the only one that plays nice with a pad. On the bright side the Chimp has legacy console support, and they're designed to be used with common ground 360 controllers, so you're not swimming upstream. I think it was Gummo that put one in a 360 pad without having to make an external box for it, but I don't know how difficult it was or how much modification it required, hence the project box aspect. Gummo on SRK probably has more experience than anyone in working with 360 pads both for dual mods and PS3 conversions. I would ask him what your best option is. https://twitter.com/gummowned

It's hard to say since we really only know what there is to know from watching match videos, and so far the only known players that have tried her are Kakyun and Minami. She definitely seems to be a basic character for the most part, though we still don't know enough specifics about her drive to make a judgment on that. She does have a few unique aspects though; an invincible super that's almost entirely safe on block, a chargeable DP that retains invuln through charge (though is not frame 1 invuln), what looks to be a very strong backdash, a very fast grounded overhead in backhoe > rapid, a really interesting throw game due to the limited and sometimes non-existant pushback on certain normals, and overall high damage. Japan seems to be not so hot on BlazBlue right now, and there's almost no Celica discussion on Twitter, so most likely we'll have to wait until April to find out what's really up. Early CPE tier lists put her bottom though.

Some of those assists are really cool; I hope the mix up is there to make them useful outside of combos. The game looks really fun though, we must pray for a speedy console release. Is there any word when they'll show gameplay of the new characters?

This game looks really fun, but I need some Saber gameplay in my life. I really hope they gave her invisible air; I always thought that would be cool in a fighting game.

Kakyun Celica (13 Dan) v. Goro Makoto (17 Dan) http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm25214723

Character specific safe jumps are not fundamental in a game with 34 different wake up timings. Learning how to hit your character's reversal window is. So yes.

High level play is totally irrelevant here. If both players know what they're doing, player one is expected to be able to find a two frame window that is ALWAYS in the same place should he want it, and player two is expected to either do a meaty or oki set up that is DP safe, or take their chances knowing that their DP punish is strong enough that the reward for potentially baiting it in any given situation outweighs the risk of having their offense reversed. The point is that for new or even experienced casual players, their ability to do a simple combo into knockdown, get frame advantage, and mount a simple high/low/throw offense without learning safe jump and oki setups for the entire cast supersedes their need to volcanic viper on wake up. You give new players one thing to learn (their reversal timing) instead of like 34, which would be safe meaty set ups for face up and face down knockdowns on every character in the game. If you want to get yourself above that basic level, you either need to find your two frame reversal window or learn how to block on wake up.

I think you're looking at it from the wrong side. It can certainly be frustrating to not be able to reverse obvious meaties without having impeccable timing, and feeling overwhelmed on defense is a pretty common complaint about anime games, but it's much more important that people be able to utilize fundamentals and capitalize off of basic combos into a knockdown to mount an offense without having to deal with the constant threat of lazy wake up reversals, especially in a game where they can be RCed to get frame advantage or get big damage. From a developer's perspective, you have two options. 1) You can put the impetus on players to learn one timing, which is the reversal window for their character as small as it may be, and require them to execute their reversals in that window OR 2) In order for them to avoid wake up reversals and allow them to execute a basic gameplan of knockdown > frame advantage > mix up, you can require them to learn safe jumps and meaty set ups for a cast of 17 characters which all have unique wake up timings (both face down and face up) and a plethora of different reversal options from backdash, to blitz shield, super, and volcanic viper. Making the reversal window small is by far the lesser of two evils.

You can just test it in training mode. I used a 60fps capture card, but you can tell using a dummy, especially when you try to punish it with a 5f normal.

Do any of our venom players understand why QV is still -4 on instant block?

First to with a 15 dan Celica for anyone who still cares. http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm25033925

Here we go... Well, I know when I think 'easy character', I immediately think charge moves and stances. Especially stances that don't let you block.

BDC doesn't protect against cross ups, and if you do cross them up they'll be pressing forward forward into your mixup and getting hit by the disc every time. Even if the slayer does manage to BDC jump FD to get away from the high low, as long as you're using grounded normals he's basically giving you all of his tension to prevent getting hit which is a victory in and of itself. FD is super costly in Xrd.

Twitch cops crashed the party...

Hemi Jack is the sheep one, the alarm clock one is Sinusoidal Helios. The alarm clock is strike invuln frame one and plus eleven on block so it's a good defensive option despite it losing to throws, but Xrd continues the tradition of Guilty Gear having a very small reversal window. I believe it's two frames as it was previously. It feels like they've added SOME degree of advanced input leniency (button hold), but no one has said anything about it, so it's purely speculation, and as with a two frame anything double tapping is probably the best solution. Generally the reversal window is later than you think it is; for Bedman it's right as his character model has completely stood up. There are three frames of this animation that look the same, but this is the one the H registered on during a successful wake up alarm clock: http://tinypic.com/r/2duig02/8

Nage and Gazou are arguably the best. Kiisha, Osaka B, and Nemo are also very strong.

Kudos for thinking in the same vein as great Fausts that came before you, though this is how his mix-up has always worked outside of the wild card 6H. FD Drill cancel j. K for the overhead, or empty drill cancel/whiff j. 2K into low/mettakiri. The minimum height requirement for j. 2K FD cancel seems to be higher in Xrd than it was in AC, so j. 2K whiff does seem superior if you're going to go empty. Also, in almost every situation, a properly timed Mettakiri is always going to be a better option than grab because it can be done outside of the opponent's reversal throw range, it leads to more damage, and most importantly Mettakiri will hit them out of jump start up frames if they try to up back while throw will not (though fuzzy jump really isnt meant to be done on wake-up).

I was playing with 3 and 4 bars and the latency display was pretty consistent at between 3 and 7 frames. Not AC bad, but in all honesty I would say borderline unplayable unless you just want to hit buttons. Here's to hoping for a week 1 netcode patch like Persona.

I'm down.

Errol, can you elaborate on your statement that Celica is trash? From the videos I've seen recently people seem to be doing much better with her.

That's not all that unusual. A lot of normals (even ones that are considered really good) are like this. Ragna 5B at max distance gets beat clean by Azrael 2A CH. Try it at home, kids.