Maho

Sadly Azrael can't do much about w5C oki, Growler will whiff if the oki is spaced is done correctly, I wouldn't recommend to try him because the punish will hurt and he will get a lot of wolf meter wth this. Scud will beat it, but if the Valk didn't commit, he'll be able to escape with a 7D and punish afterwards, backdash is possible midscreen but of course will expose you to a 6D~A. CAs are probably the best way to get out of wolf pressure but he can bait those the same way he baits bursts with 4/7D, he just need to adjust the timing a bit, so you have to avoid getting previsible with those. I find the wolf extremly hard to AA on reaction due to 4/7D fakeouts, like LordSpectreX I find the neutral hard against Valk, to counter his approches, you have to commit to a read most of times but can't punish his whiffs as well as he can punish yours.:/

Seriously, people should wait a bit that we get more feedback before saying she will be S or anything, but I guess she might be in countries where 6B is unblocakble...

A lot of the balance problems with BB are due to the fact that in this game, there are characters with a gameplay archetype pushed to the extreme, and that obviously will create bad matchups. Another thing is that nowadays, people start to whine about a character way faster and cry a lot more when something is too strong, so you hear a lot more about balance problems. GG had dominating characters in every version, some like #R Eddie were more dominating that any of the BB tops have ever been, but the community was kinda more tolerant to this. Now for Xrd we'll have to wait and see, but I'm pretty sure we'll hear a lot about balance with how players are nowadays, you can already see people asking for Zato nerfs...

TTT2 Unlimited has actually an offline version meant to be used for promotion in events, but there is no coin settings, only freeplay is possible so that's hardly commercially exploitable (plus I'm not sure Namco would be ok with it). If I remember correctly, Fubarduck tried to get Nesica to the US and it never happened, getting Sega to do what Taito didn't should be quite hard. Anyway if you really want to try this, you might better get in touch with people that have experience in this business, you'll probably get more relevant info than here.

Where do you get this number from? Looking at the system data, a VS starter would make us start at 4f decay, one second of combo time put us at 6f and one more at 9f, with this most of Tager's combo become impossible. To test this I disabled tech and used counter assault RC to see what we can do from a VS starter, and it's really limited like the frame data says, so with 5A as a VS, the max combo might be something like 5A > 3C > AC whiff > 5C > AC. For now we can just wait to get feedback from the JAEPO, but I'm pretty pessimistic as Valk as a similar nerf on his wjA and wjB, and the latest infos seems to be confirm those as VS starters.

236B on grounded opponents needs a crouch hit or a graviton set to do activate > 2C > 236B, for the latter if j2C can't be used as fast fall, you won't be able to get anything really damaging.

VS starter means the combo starts with 4f of hitstun decay, it's like comboing after a counter assault or a 360, you don't get much.

5A and 2A are already S starters, if those are changed to VS, this would be very bad, 5A wouldn't be much of a threat after a Gadget and the mixup would suffer a lot, maybe they'll give him a special starter value to get rid of the loop while still allowing for decent magentized combos. For 3C, I'll wait to see how much frames faster it is but I don't think it will change much, same thing with 2D which duration is 60f on whiff, it's a buff but honestly if it's something like 5f, this wouldn't change the fact you don't want to whiff this move ever, we'll have to wait I guess. j2C change just makes things easier but it's not like we couldn't combo most of the times with proper confirm, Gadget nerf isn't not too bad but I don't really see why they did this. So one possible big nerf and some whatever buffs, pretty disappointed in the changes for now, hoping he gets some interesting non listed changes.

HNK is more fun and hype than BB will probably ever be though.

Unless activate hitstun as been changed, you don't need to force crouch after it as you can go into 2C > 6C, but that leaves some questions out there, as what can you do after 6C if you already use activate? The best route in corner is jC > j5D > jC > j214D > jC > j2C whiff |> 6[A] or 5C, I'm pretty sure 6[A] version will be gone with the new j2C landing recovery, 5C gives more margin for that, it should depend on how the new float property affect j2C used as a fastfall move in this combo. Midscreen, jB > j2C |> 5A route should probably be gone with j2C changes, the other possible route is to go for 2C > 5D > 5B > gatlings > 236A > 3C > ender, but the possible 236A nerf might make this impossible (you only get 2f to hit with 3C after 236A in the current version).

One day people will understand that all 22B okis can always be late neutral teched, why you see 22B now as oki is because of BH setups that use it as an anti roll tool. If it's used outside of that situation, the player is just being lazy and needs to learn her better setups.

Don't just assume things, the dash and the attack part are separate, I just tested by recording at 60fps, Gustav frame advantage doesn't change depending on the distance, only way to get more than +1 is doing it meaty on a wakeup.

Could you tell us what's your safejump setup? Azrael backdash is 26F long, you say that you don't have anything that's fast enough to punish that after a safejump with Bullet? What does she have, a +20f 5A?

I was actually already searching for "fair" mixups by playing without BH for the last 2 months, I spend a lot of time preparing a corner mixup video like the one I did for the midscreen fireball oki, anticipating the incoming BH nerf we were all expecting, and I kinda lost my time as almost nothing I found will work anymore. The only thing you can still get for sure is the C superball combo into 236C freeze > 22B + TP mixup you probably saw Jiyuna use on his stream, A superball corner version can also be done. Some corner fireball setups might be possible on high damage starters assuming graviton can still be cancelled by 6B, but you have to lose about 30-40% of the potential damage to do so, I'm not sure it's really something you want to do. Trying to use the same thing midscreen makes the fireball setup rollable both ways unlike the setup we can do now, so it's pretty much useless and you might always go for max damage.

Yeah if the only damage nerfs are the 10% on combo rate and less hits on 236C's minigun, she'll still do too much damage out of a lot of starters, for exemple my max damage corner combo out of corner CH5C does 8048 for 50% heat, the nerfs pretty much won't affect it and it should probably still be around 7k. Now her mixup looks like to be on Terumi's level with thoses changes, she loses midscreen fireball mixup, corner fireball setups will be impossible to do anymore, and well with the lost of IOH those wouldn't be as much of a threat, 236C RC mixups are probably gone with auto super, what are you gonna do as a mixup? 6B all day? Loss of corner BH setups was obvious and I think it's a good, but I'm a little disappointed with Arc Sys choices in the design here, I was hoping for a setup/mixup character with a more reasonable damage output and I get what, no mixups and stupid damage on some CHs? Anyway I guess she will still be playable, but will she be any fun is another question.

Just tested this, seems it's +15 if you cancel it as early as possible, +10 if you want to do something you can't cancel into like a dash.

Well Growler as it is now is pretty bad as a reversal, it trades often, deals weak damage and put Azrael in a bad position most of the time, and just to say, I wouldn't be against Valk getting a huge problem, or even just a real problem for once actually, but I think other solutions could be interesting. One would be for Growler to do a somewhat vertical launch that would allow for a short combo by RCing it without the need for a combo movie situation (with actual Growler P1, it would range from 1.5 to 2k), make it that normal hit is just safe on hit, CH giving barely an advantage for oki, with that trades might give you a free combo depending on the move that hit you. And if they think this would be too strong, at least they could make Scud faster so it's a bit better as a reversal.

They give her this because you don't want to only nerf a character when doing balance, however too strong this character is, if you only take away tools, the players of said character won't have anything new to work with, ending up playing just a lesser version of the character, which isn't any fun. The nerfs she got are pretty significant already, the loss of activate hitboxes outside of combos is big, changes the zoners matchups completely, makes her instant overhead not safe to use (maybe midscreen will be ok I guess) and a lot of oki midscreen oki setups are gone. Now for damage we don't know how much it will be reduced, I just hope they do some decent work adjusting P1s and P2s of hers moves and not just rape her combo rate like they did with Tager from CT to CS1, making some of the legit things she can do now useless in the process. We don't have precise info on the revolvers chains gone as well, but I would say that the 5B/2B/5C > 6A > 5B/2B/5C have great chances to be gone, reducing mixup and damage at the same time, they will also probably limit the moves from which she can go into 6B because players needs hints to block a 25f overhead nowadays. As long as she has something jump cancelable that goes into 2B, she still have a decent low/hig mixup, but the graviton nerf makes the OH option very risky (unless you just go for jC j2C but that's not much damage). The new super is kind of a "safe buff" regarding balance I think unless they really fuck up like they did with BH, it will give her a limited tool to compensate her loss in zoning abilites due to the graviton nerf, also for info Tager laser super isn't a full screen punish as it's minimum startup is 48f, the only real use of that super is its OD version at the end of combos to get the massive minimum damage.

If you are baiting the super, IBing shouldn't really be a problem.

Azrael can punish Super ball like that : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JmT2BFp6jA Hakumen here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dB2npyMtLA#t=31s Didn't make videos but I know strong punishes for Terumi and Kokonoe herself, also the Tager that as been posted above, I don't know if everyone can do it as well as those, but I guess throw might be universal.

Yeah I know that, a command throw is never really useless, one other use I got a few times is as an IB punish, it being 4 frames is nice there, otherwise it may be the lack of invuln and the all in gamble that makes me not want to go for it that much. Anyway the rule could take this issue in consideration, I think anyone can see the difference between a failed astral and an intended BH setup, and actually Kokonoe should get punished here unless the opponent is really sleeping, maybe the ban could be on comboing after black hole to remove this problem. Black hole does 1.2k damage that can't kill, so if you don't allow comboing after it, there would be no reason to go for a BH instead of super ball into 236C ender which does about 1.5k that can kill.

Well that's your opinion, now I don't think all the BS we see was intentionnal, also making some low tier worse and some top better isn't what I would call polishing a game, but everyone has the right to see it another way. For others exemples, it's not hard to think of this, games I think no one would argue with HNK and Basara (I say that even with HNK being one of my favorite games ever), for specific characters like Kokonoe, I can clearly remember when Slayer was released on arcade XX, he had some of the worse BS ever, BDC giving 19f invuln on all specials, one command throw equals death. Well just to say that arcade locations test are not fool proof, we had more than enough evidence of that from history of arcade FGs. Now the problem I see with banning all console characters, is that thanks to that Kokonoe debate, not only Kokonoe players would lose their main for the "health of the game", but Terumi and Kagura players too, when their characters are clearly far from being broken. Lol you're right, I actually got that today on netplay, to be fair I doubt I would go for her Astral in a tournament though, I guess most Kokonoe players would better not be able to use her astral that having her fully banned.

Well it's not like Arc Sys never put unpolished games out in arcades, I guess P4U2 is a recent good exemple of that.

From my experience as a TO (so people don't think I'm making up things, I've been the TO of pretty much every French BB tourney untill the last SBO quals for CS2, nowadays I'm the main TO of X-Mania Europe and help on some others tournaments), the black hole must be banned by itself and not just in corner. Why? Because that rule would be a nightmare to enforce, like how much away from corner would be OK? And how do you judge that in game? That's also why I don't think it's realistic to ban the pseudo infinite blockstring, as enforcing this would be actually even harder, it would need a referee that knows the game well on every station to keep an eye on all Kokonoe matches. And again, how much reps do you allow, which timing counts as an attempt of the blockstring, and how much delay is OK? I remember in France, the Soul Calibur community has a lot of specific bugs banned for SC3 (well they actually ban things in every game but I clearly remember this exemple), it caused the referee situation I talked about and was really a pain for TOs. Now as a player, the midscreen setups may be more situationnal but those are still stupid, she really don't need that at all, there's so much potential in graviton setups, I really look for what Kokonoe players can find if they start working on that instead of going for black hole setups 95% of the time. I guess you never played Tager.

7-3 and even 8-2 matches matches aren't anything new in this game, like STenSatsu said, we would ban more than just Koko if this was for those, also I agree that Koko has a strong advantage over most of the cast, but I remember during CT time, the community somewhat agreed that this was a 7-3 matchup and this was an 8-2 one (I really wonder how people would react nowadays if we had a character like that in CP). Now if we take black hole out of the game, I don't think Koko can do anything close to win as free as that, I would agree she would still hard counter at least Amane, Rachel and probably Arakune, but for others I think that we would have to see what happens (not saying that those would become bad matchups for her though). Also to be fair unless you were living under a rock for the past year, you had to know Amane wasn't a tournament win character when you picked him, sorry but even without Kokonoe, he's just bad overall and not a character you should pick if you really want to win tournaments. Players that waited for Kokonoe to be playable for a long time (to be clear I'm one of them) on the other hand had no idea that she would be like she is, so there's a little difference here, you knew what you were getting into, they didn't. Now don't misunderstand me, I respect your choice, I've mained Tager in tournaments since CT, so I know how it feels to have characters that literally shit on yours. At CT and CS1 time when I was doing more tournaments, I had to climb through brackets fighting numerous very bad matchups, I was placing top 2-3 pretty much every time but almost never won, losing a lot of times against a friend that was playing V13 in CT and Litchi in CS1. He would always say to me "Why are you playing this shitty character when you could win more if you were playing a good one", but like I guess you are with Amane, I just had more fun playing Tager than another character at the time, but I couldn't argue with him on that point, he was just right, if you really want to be competitive, you have to pick a good character. EDIT : Well I hope that's true and that it will come to consoles asap, so this debate can end (or not if she get Valkenhayn like balance).