Angel-tastic

Greetings all. So I don't understand what the following change means: Doesn't 6236 already give DPs priority over quarter circle specials? That's what I do right now when I want to do a DP, and if I want to dash into a quarter circle move, I have to input 2366 because 66236 gives me a DP instead. Or does this mean that now I can do 6641236 to dash into a quarter circle special instead of 2366 or something like that? Would someone be so kind as to clear this up for me? Thank you!

Yeah, people ironically have a lot of trouble with good Izayoi players. I think that's mostly due to the fact that she's so underplayed that (at least in the States) you can go a good month without facing an Izayoi, much less a good one, so when people finally go up against her, they don't really seem to know what they should be doing due to not really having much experience with the match-up. That said, the teleport tactics Purepure was using aren't as gimmicky as they look. If spaced correctly, Sonic Saber into D teleport is a legitimate setup for a blockstring that can't be punished (it's like +3 or something I think, but it varies of course). Also, if the opponent reacts to the teleport when the projectile is just few frames away and gets hit, you can get a full combo from that too. You just have to make sure the Saber hits just after the teleport invulnerability ends. I think that's the point of the A Sonic Saber that makes it dangerous in Gain Art, and I think that the coming buff to make D teleport cost 1 stock is supposed to support this setup. Also, you can use the invulnerability frames from her other teleports in neutral to dodge certain attacks and improve your position at the same time, mostly for slow, long ranged attacks that can't be easily countered. Dodging Kokonoe's C normals for instance with teleport is safe since the recovery on those normals is too long to punish the teleport, but using Izayoi's teleports like this takes a lot of match-up experience though. I'm not very good at it myself. I'm not really sure why Ares likes to rush in with Kokonoe though. Isn't she supposed to be zoner? I don't play Kokonoe, so I don't really know what is and isn't good to do with her.

That's true, but to be honest, I think that "easiest character to win with after learning how to use them" is pretty much just the standard tier list with Valkenhayn on the top and Izayoi on the bottom, so I don't think that's what the OP is looking for (correct me if I'm wrong, of course, OP!). Personally, I think characters with easy execution and a straight-forward game plan, but difficult neutral are a good way to learn fighting game fundamentals since you can concentrate on learning to play in neutral without worrying about execution. As for characters who are easiest to use and who are also high tier, maybe Mu would be a good one. She has god-like neutral and good damage and setups, and I think her combos are pretty easy so long as you're good at dashing in the middle of combos. Also, Jin is probably good too. He's pretty well-rounded and his combos and confirms seem to be on the easier side execution-wise.

These are brilliant! Win or lose, this is what I'd like to see more of vs. Kokonoe. The Izayoi player was correctly blocking things that a lot of people just get hit by, punishing things other players let Kokonoe get away with, good baiting and reading, and generally being mindful of the Gravitons and making intelligent decisions based on that. The match-up is hard to get the hang of since Kokonoe's gameplay is just so strange and different, but she looks really fun to fight once you figure out what you're doing. I need to take some notes so I can get better at it too. Also, should I know this Izayoi player from the arcades? I don't think I've heard of "pretzel-i-lab-lb" before, and he seems pretty good to have not have heard of.

Izayoi combos start at 2:58. It seems pretty popular to make combo movies for both Tsubaki and Izayoi in the same video (I remember at least two others off-hand).

So right now that setup doesn't seem that strong (backdash out, crouch, run forward, Inferno Divider, etc.), but maybe it might work better with the movement upgrades in the near future. It could be a useful thing to keep in mind to try out later. If you want to cross them up, you can still do IAD -> j.B -> j.C after the Sonic Saber. Maybe not the best setup ever, but OK if they're not ready to anti-air I suppose.

Hmm. I guess that counter just doesn't do that much damage. I suppose ~3.3k seemed kind of low to me since her C normal counter combos in Gain-art all do more damage than that. It would be cool if you could use CS Beta somehow in a combo without Valkyrie Astraea, like how Bullet can sometimes use her command throws without the follow-ups if she doesn't have any heat-up levels.

Greetings all. So I was wondering, what do you all usually do if you get a fatal counter with Valkyrie Astraea? Between the strange counter-hit properties and the fact that you can't use [CS Beta -> Valkyrie Astraea] in the combo, I haven't been able to think of anything that does good damage and doesn't waste all my stocks. If I knew any interesting combos, I would probably try to punish things with it more, since it's pretty fast and has good range.

So I started playing around with Bullet yesterday and I think she's really easy to learn. I figured out how to do most of her practical combos in a couple of hours, and I'd swear it took weeks to learn Izayoi's combos (j.BAC why does it not connect? What am I doing wrong? D: ) Having easy combos is nice when getting into a fighting game because then you can concentrate on managing your resources and finding openings instead of fretting about dropping your combos. Her combos also seem pretty easy to confirm into even if it's tricky to approach with Bullet. Also, she has a combo-able standing overhead (without requiring resources or counter hits), a meter-less reversal, and oki in all her combos from her drive, so I think that she could be a good character to learn to get into the fighting game mentality for this game and become reasonably competent. I don't want to rank the other characters, but I think that Bullet would be pretty high on the "easy to learn" list. Edit: Fixed a typo, wrote "be" twice somewhere...

So I don't play Nu so much now, but I always thought that the matches where Tager spams sledge indiscriminately were the easiest ones. Sledge only blocks projectiles through its active animation, so you can just wait for sledge's recovery and then counter him with your drive. It seems like sledge only helps Tager if he is close enough to actually hit Nu with it, as otherwise Nu's projectiles just seem to come out too fast for sledge spamming to work. Maybe I just got lucky in my Tager matches, but a lot of Tager players I've followed look like they opt to just block Nu's drives to close the distance, so I think that's probably why.

I feel like the reason for the short range on GA 5C is so it's harder to do combos without any stocks and encourage players to start combos with Valkyrie Astraea. If 5C hit as far as in normal mode, then you could do mid-screen stuff like [j.C - 5C - CS Gamma - 214A - 5C - j.BC - j.BC - j.236C], which would actually be pretty cool, but I think that's probably what the devs had in mind. 5B jump cancel would be nice too. I know I've tried to do that before when I hit an aerial opponent who is too far away for 5C, and then remembered that I can't do that, lol. I wonder if the angled air-dash is optional or not. I like the [iAD - j.B - j.C] cross-up, so I hope that still works. It would be interesting to be able to IAD into 2B, though. I'm a bit sad that D Sonic Saber is more expensive now. I felt like that was Izayoi's best setup, although I guess airdash upgrades could help get in without it, and it's still cheap enough to use once in a block-string I think. The cheaper D Mirage Thruster could let us get in more inexpensively with [236A - 214D] also, so I guess it balances out. So the top entry on my Izayoi wishlist that I think would be really cool, is if you could special cancel 6B into CS Gamma (with appropriate changes to frame data to make it combo). That would be so legit.

I like this solution. It's objectively enforceable, eliminates the utility of the unblockable reset, and doesn't even require banning any moves, but just limiting what can be done with them, like you mentioned in your previous examples. I feel like maybe some different implementations of the rule could also be tested to see which one is the most applicable when taking common input errors into account. This seems like a good way to handle Kokonoe for the next 3-ish months while we wait for the balance patch in May, and it would be a great way to keep practicing the match-up without getting killed by Jamming Dark every time you block wrong.

EDIT: Oh man, look at this wall of text. This ended up being much longer than I thought. I guess just read if you find the topic interesting. You're right. I don't think that would be an issue with Jamming Dark since the input is kind of hard to do by accident and you have to make a conscious decision as to when to use it anyway. Nevertheless, I can see where Banishing Ray can be an issue since a lot of people would probably auto-pilot into it out of force of habit, and your fingers could also slip so you use it instead of a crouching normal, or even hit the wrong button when you're trying to teleport. Maybe something like you can't put out Banishing Ray and Flame Cage at the same time would be more reasonable and prevent the same exploit. In any case, if people decide that they want to give this sort of approach a try, these details can always be hammered out in an in-depth discussion. Those specific things were more just examples to get the discussion going, and I feel that the idea of a handicap is nevertheless very applicable here with appropriate considerations. I can't really argue against that. Besides the obvious exploits mentioned in support of her ban, I feel like she's otherwise a solid, yet reasonable character, certainty not that much worse than the CT zoners, and I feel that with more time people could discover reasonably consistent ways to deal with her; but as you say, the fact that many people can't practice against her except in real matches means that most people can't get in the necessary training against her, while Kokonoe mains can practice all they want against the rest of the cast. If there's any reason in support of her ban, I feel that this is probably the one. The Kokonoe mains definitely have an advantage in terms of learning the match-ups. This is exactly the point of my suggestion. An outright ban is just a question of who is more important: Kokonoe mains or everyone else (obviously everyone else is more important), whereas if this sort of solution can be effectively implemented to make Kokonoe's match-ups less lopsided, then nobody's time matters more or less than anyone else's. Agreed. The fundamental mechanics in fighting games are definitely transferable between characters and that someone who excels at a particular character is a good player generally. In all honestly, I feel that most of the successful Izayoi players that I've followed win more from better fighting game fundamentals than character specific knowledge. Nevertheless, especially at the higher levels, knowledge of the metagame is definitely very important. As new tech is discovered, conventional play-styles change and new defenses have to be learned that are often at least mildly character-specific, and new combo paths in your own character have to be learned as well. Even if they're not that difficult to learn, it still takes time, which is of course the whole reason people have mains since they can't practice everything with everyone. This means Kokonoe mains can't practice in the evolving meta except in casuals, whereas the tournament experience is very helpful in improving in the metagame with your main. Of course, it's not like they can't catch up; it would probably only take a couple months at most, so not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things. Likewise, this is contingent on her play-style remaining relatively similar, and I see no reason to believe otherwise at the moment, but if she changes as much as Nu did than ofc this doesn't apply. Nevertheless, I feel that this is in general an avoidable dilemma that can be addressed with a more creative approach. You're right. This isn't an argument for or against a ban in a competitive sense. I brought that up because I feel that the characters are really what bring life to these sorts of games, and I just find it disappointing that one of the most highly anticipated characters is being considered for banning within three months. I assume you play Amane even though he's "low tier" because you like the character's play-style, and it would be a shame if you had to switch to another character. My point is the same from the opposite side of the fence, in that the player's who really enjoy Kokonoe's play-style regardless of tier will be out of luck, so really it's same point as above where I hope that a solution can be found that doesn't boil down to: "Who is more important? Kokonoe mains or everyone else.". Addressed above in response to Dark Ranger Addressed below in response to The Arm Yeah, I agree that this is definitely going against the grain and that there would be a lot of push-back, but if this works out, I definitely think that it would be an innovative solution to a big issue, and honestly the main reason that a ban is less controversial is just because there's already a precedent for it, not necessarily because it's a better option. Of course the Smash players have more reason to do this sort of thing since their game wasn't designed to be competitive, and they had to mold it into that form, but I definitely feel this the perfect opportunity to take a page from their book. If you can impose house rules to re-balance a game that was never meant to be competitive, it seems reasonable that this mentality could be adapted even to things that were meant to be competitive, but didn't come out that way for whatever reason. Definitely true, and I agree that this sort of approach doesn't work in general. I don't think it would work to apply this sort of solution to e.g. Valkenhayn or Tao because all their moves are too integral to their play-style. However, Kokonoe seems to be an interesting case where this just might work, more through coincidence than anything, because her most questionable stuff is isolated to a couple of moves that are only usable in certain situations. For instance, if you had to ban Broken Bunker to make Kokonoe fair, then you might as well just ban her since that would break all her combos, but as far as I know, Jamming Dark isn't used for anything other than the unblockable reset, and Banishing Ray isn't used for anything other than oki (and ofc you can put it out anytime in neutral, but you get the point here). This means that with these limits Kokonoe mains could pretty much use all their usual combos verbatim, except with normal resets and normal blockstrings. There don't need to be any "intrusive" (ofc a subjective term) changes to her play-style. She's still a very strong character, but I feel like banning her in and of itself is setting a bad precedent too. As was mentioned already, some people were already taking this as an opportunity to lobby for Valkenhayn to be banned as well, and if he gets banned, then you know Tao is next on the list and so on. I guess I just feel that 2.5 months is too early to be banning characters. It takes longer than that to even figure out how to play a new character "correctly", and probably more to learn how to play against new characters competently. I guess I just feel like a lot of this ban hype is a knee-jerk reaction to this being discovered, and that it would be better just to ban that than the entire character. Of course, what ReaVer said about pay-to-win could invalidate this argument, but I think that it would at least be useful to organize some casual tournaments with some handicaps in place to see how it works out. While it would be more of a nuisance to plan this out than to just ban her, it could also be a very elegant solution to this situation that would avoid a ban. Fair enough, but while Kokonoe is clearly a very strong character, I feel that it's too early for us to throw our hands up and say she's unbeatable. This seems to me just like how new players think that Tager is unstoppable, but he's actually very manageable once you learn the technicalities behind his character. People can just as well argue that the other "S Tier" characters invalidate everyone else, but we just have to learn to deal with them. This ban just seems like too scrubby of a reaction to me. Of course, if you're a TO and your clients stop attending your tournaments, it kind of forces your hand, but I feel like there are alternative solutions to maintain the health of the game other than banning the offending characters, and banning just the clearly OP tactics (OP meaning unblockable and infinite for the purposes of this argument) is a good start I think. Again, the pay-to-win issue could make alternatives problematic since many people can't train this match-up like they can with Tager, but I do feel that the match-up still needs more development in general before coming to conclusions with big implications. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to have a candid discussion. I know everyone's already probably tired of talking about Kokonoe, but I felt that this was an interesting alternative to propose that might work if people can get behind it.

Greetings all. So this Kokonoe ban kind of rubs me the wrong way, and I really think that there's a better solution, so I made an account pretty much just to make this post. Please take a moment to consider this option and hopefully it will resolve this issue in a way that's fair to everyone. I put my idea in boldface below in case you don't want to read all the way through my wall of text. To start off, I absolute agree that Kokonoe is broken and that something should be done, but I don't like banning her as the solution. That's just not really fair to all the Kokonoe mains for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it's sort of a waste of the considerable amount of time it no doubt took them to learn the character. Now I don't play Kokonoe (I main Izayoi), so I don't know how difficult she is execution-wise, but for Izayoi, it took me months to learn all her tricky combos like the j.BAC stuff, and the setups you need to know for a character that doesn't have a lot of mix-up to her name, memorizing all the match-up specific combos and tactics, etc., and if Kokonoe is anything like that, I'd be really demotivating to lose all that invested time. Secondly, even when Arcsys eventually re-balances her probably next year or something and she gets un-banned, the Kokonoe mains are still going to be way behind. Honestly, I don't expect Kokonoe's gameplay style to change much if at all. Really, all that needs to be done probably is stuff like reducing her character combo rate, some proration and blockstun values, and removing Jamming Dark for instance, so she'll probably play pretty similarly. This means that Kokonoe mains will miss out on a year's worth of matchup and tournament experience that will still be viable even after she's fixed, so Kokonoe mains will have tons of catching up to do. Lastly, some people are just really interested in particular characters. I was so in love with Izayoi's play-style that I pretty much bought a PS3 and imported the game just to main her (I played the other BBs on the other systems, so I didn't have a PS3 yet). If the character I bought the game and console just to play got banned, that would make me just want to quite the game. I'd probably end up playing Mu or Nu instead, but I wouldn't enjoy that game as much as I do with Izayoi. Anyway, I feel like there's a more fair way to go about this. Instead of banning Kokonoe outright, why not just give Kokonoe mains a sort of handicap instead? Let's say something like no Jamming Dark and no Banishing Ray. If a Kokonoe main uses either of these specials in a match, it counts the same as pausing the game and they forfeit the match. I feel like something really simple like that would address most of major issues people have with her. Without using those two moves she has no unblockable reset, no infinite blockstring, no touch-of-death. The Kokonoe mains wont really lose a whole lot like this either since these thing will most certainly be nerfed out of her anyway, but this way they can still use the character that they like and whom they've invested a lot of time into while practicing combos that they'll need in BBCP2. Sure, she's still a strong character without these, but I feel like that would bring her down the the "S Tier" level and give people more time to practice and flesh out the matchup and learn how to handle her without her completely warping the metagame, and besides this benefits everyone else as well because everyone can still get valuable match-up experience against Kokonoe without getting pwned by her more questionable tactics. So what does everyone think about this idea? I feel like that's really a viable solution and I'd like to see some TOs at least give it a shot before banning Kokonoe outright. I don't know if this is a good place to share this or not. If it isn't, please inform me of where I should post this so I can take it up with the relevant people. Thanks.