Discotheque

GG to all who I played today. Alzarath had a public execution shit going; "hey, spend a dollar so you can watch Alzarath murder you at the corner." Finally got him off the fucking game after like 3 matches and him at like a 15 win streak. And then I lost to a Bang player, who was a really cool guy so it's all cool.

I think they fixed the C button on 1st player. Only played for like 30min but I got all of my inputs in.

I'll be up there probably around 5:30 with 2 other guys who are still new to this. I gotta leave around 7 tonight though, so catch me quick.

Isaiah, you use Hakumen too now? I gotta play ur Hakumen+tao to get a better feel for match-ups.

You got me like twice in like one match lol

I think the con list in pg.1 is a too harsh. You should add a few more pros. The hardest thing is to set-up the doll in the right position so you can set up pressure strings with nirvana behind the opponent and you in front (obviously). But once you do, the mix-up option is great with his j2C/low/throw. He can do insane damage with either his volley-ball loop or just the plain old 6D loop. His distortion drives are incredibly useful from preventing the opponent's burst. As long as you input the drive and the drive activates, the opponent is screwed even if they burst because they'll get hit but whichever drive you used. His antiair option is great if you have doll, 623D and 8D. It's just that once nirvana is dead its \(^o^)/

She really isn't a rush-down character unless you're mike and have like a instant-puma like reaction to counterhit all of the opponents options. And her pressure game is only good if you have 25% tension to scare your opponent to thinking you're gonna throw out a FB puff. Her ground pokes are quick, but none of em really leads into her staple combos unless its a 2S/6HS (and 6HS is slow as fuck) counterhit. Her jump-in options are poor with reliance pretty much only on a j.hs mekuri or mix-up with gekirin, j.2S, both of which are easy to see and punishable on block. Her defensive game isn't that great when you consider how her uppercut is really mediocre. Parry is really situational and it can't block lows. Her backdash is great, but against certain characters (like Slayer) it can be punished. Jam's playing style definitely changed over the years. Reminds me of how there were lots of really aggresive Sol players like Isa that would rush-down and pressure till the opponent made a mistake to rape; now people just realized that "hit and run" is much, much safer playstyle for characters like Jam. Except with Jam, if you get that hit, it better do over 60% damage or you'll probably lose. EDIT: Johnny has like 1 reliable mix-up option; tigerknee ensenga.

In the end, just saying that player skill covers for all aspect of character weakness is kind of at fault. The quote that Hellmonkey got was just the generic attitude that the Japanese GG community have toward the game (a true statement), but when you are listening to the match-vids and you're listening to the players/announcers at TRF/SBO/a-cho you can clearly see the distaste toward the S-A tiers (especially Slayer, Eddie, May, Jam, Potemkin) because of their relative ease to win against the lower tiers. It's true that almost all characters can win with 2-3 combos, but then there are characters that just lacks firepower (Millia, Johnny, Bridget, Chipp, Ky comes to mind) and watching May do 70% tensionless OHK combos, Slayer do 60-70% combos with counterhits, Jam to 60% wall loops with one FB puffball/ground gatling to 6HS, when Bridget/Johnny requires like 50% tension to do even 50% life combos just kinda screams wtf? I think in the end, the changes in tiers pretty much reflect how the general GG community in Japan saw how important it is for a character to do simple, big damage, because no matter how great you get at spacing, if you ever got baited once, you have a potential to instantly lose to the higher tiers, when with a lower tier, they have to work much harder knowing that they couldn't do even half-life combos. Game balance =/= tiers aren't important. Though AC tiers aren't that bad compared to other fighters.

Saying that tiers are so close together and that discussing them are useless is kinda... dumb. As much as people say AC is balanced and that certain characters can beat another character as long as the players are good, there are pretty much only 2,3 players in those specific characters that can actually reliably pull this off. Yes, unlike other fighters GGXX is much, much more match-up dependent than straight out character traits, but saying that there is negligible difference between S tier and D tier is absolutely misinforming. How often do we see a Johnny, Bridget, Chipp players beat the top players of Eddie, Testa, Slayer? I can only like name like 4-5. And 4-5 players doesn't really account for the thousands of guys who play this at a much "lower" level. I personally rather discuss more 3 vs. 3 team team "tiers," though I can kinda see how the team set-up would look like (lol Eddie, Testa, Bakiken team)

Yeah, my mistake. That half-naked Asian guy has guts 5.

If Slayer vs. HoS is about even, then there is no way Ky vs HoS is even. Ky probably has the advantage over HoS about 5.5:4.5

Baiken at least has guts 5, which means near the last quarter of her health, the opponent pretty much has to land a solid combo to kill her instead of random pokes/hits. She has solid damage outputs that really only revolves around 6 hits (tatami launch , j.p, j.s, j.D -> iad j.s j.D) unlike Millia who has to land 10hits-15 hits or even more to do 50% life (often using 25% tension or pin). Baiken just has a better defensive game (duh iad backwards tatami+counters) and a pretty good jump-ins (j.s, j.h) when the need comes. She doesn't have nearly as "bad" match-ups compared to Millia as well. Venom is a solid B tier character. Best lockdown at corner. If you get sweeped and he has 50% tension, you're at the corner+you lose all your tension from Dark Angel. His 6P+6HS is one of the best AA's in the game. Only thing he lacks is great damage outputs and once he gets rushed down, he has trouble escaping from pressure. Axl is well, I think much more debatable. He has great normals, but his game plan is really predictable. I agree with Teyah. She's like hovering in between C+B.

Not to mention that she takes a fuckton of damage.