Ronove

Riku, encore oki is exactly what Tao needed, imho. I'm fine sacrificing a chunk of damage if I can keep the momentum and press the opponent right away.

Kinji sort of began playing around CS2, I recall the first vids of him at a-cho where the commentator and the crowd were encouraging him and complimenting on him for gradually learning and adapting to high-level matches, trying to cheer him up when he'd screw up something. In Extend he leveled-up to the point where Galileo always gets nervous when playing against him. IMHO he's probably the second best Tao after Tsujikawa (I rate him higher than Izayoi Matoi). As for AB2, I don't mind it not getting a lot of damage given that Tao seems to be able to deal plenty without it anyway, so far it seems to be used mostly when going for the finishing blow.

Once CP is out on consoles, be my guest >:3

Yeah, that new followup move is so good. And color 16 (white tao + black hair) is mine. MINE. Gosh, I have to say I'm thrilled to play Tao again. Been a long time since I've felt like this.

Fine by me, her damage still remains high and finally we've got our knockdown back (though not in every combo). Her combos still have some really sweet corner carry as well. It's also worth noting that her RC combos seem to deal more damage than in the previous iterations. Tao really seem to have more options than ever in using meter. Sweet. I was on the verge of choosing another character for CP but seeing how she looks so fun and amazing I'll stick with her. :3

Holy crap, looks like we finally got some sort of knockdown/oki back! Atleast at the corner. Tao looks bloody awesome in CP. [edit] forgot to mention that I really like that she can also use her CT in combos to keep the opponent pinned down on the ground at the corner, she almost plays like a GG character now.

I had a premium account. I should renew it. :X

imho there's no such thing as bad experience, facing anyone no matter if good, decent, or bad is a learning experience nonetheless. If anything there can be a lack of experience, but every match played should be counted as part of the learning process. Getting bad habits is usually caused by facing the same kind of opponents, it's not entirely related to the quality of the opponent himself/herself.

well, it's ok as long as she can reset pressure efficiently through drive cancels.

I like that her combos got shorter but still deal some sweet damage, they sort of feel like CT combos. And her Cat1 followup looks pretty sweet.

I don't know about that. On paper yes, zoners are likely going to be her worst matchups but Hazama still needs to get close ... it might simply mean that against him rather than playing on the offensive she needs to stay on defense until she can score a knockdown. Again, it's wild speculation based on her nature as grappler character.

Well, being limited to short hops and having her range of normals looking pretty ordinary it wouldn't be weird if her worst matchups were to be Arakune, Rachel and alikes.

Well, I'm thinking of the usual standard stuff... she's got command grabs, an overhead normal which seems to be as shady as Bang's, and it seems like her combos have enough corner carry? Nothing as ridiculous as CSX Valk's corner oki or Litchi's, but it does give the impression of being potentially nasty. Besides that, it wouldn't be weird if some of her normals would give decent frame advantage as well given that she's a sort of grappler. Of course it's all speculation based on the very few vids available around.

taunt combos were fun though. D: I like the fact that she's not limited to one combo route anymore but I wish we could get some sort of knockdown back. Anyway I partially share the same thoughts as CryingVoid. CSEX Tao is strong but I got quickly bored of her. I am not sure whether I'll stick with her in CP, we'll see.

She looks pretty fun and with some potentially nice oki. I'm seriously considering dropping Tao in her favour :o

Kinji has gotten so good, I remember the first vids a long time ago where people at a-cho would cheer him up when he was still "learning" his trade among these veterans.

Well, there's little to no problem at all anyway given that you're practically one of the few (if not the only) person keeping the tao board alive

That Taokaka mirror between Kinji and Matoi is like an encyclopedia of win

you could learn her midscreen combo 5B>5C>j.B>j.2B>j.C>dash 6A>aerial atleast for the "big" characters, however imho it's better to learn her corner carry routes, so anything that will lead to j.D~A>6C>4D~A>6C>ender (or just j.D~A>6C>6C>ender). Corner carry combos give you generally good to awesome meterless damage, in some cases you can choose to sacrifice damage for an ender that gives a semi-knockdown, and most important thing you can switch the regular ender with the AB2 ender once you have meter.

Nope, they don't since CS2.

What will the point of using 236C outside of combos be if it's not even an overhead anymore :psy: Glad for better j.B, however I never really liked the j.b>j.2B combos, I hope better combo routes will show up.

I wonder what combo routes she's going to have. I wouldn't mind being able to use 3C midscreen again...

Great news!

"It feels like her air-movement options have decreased somehow, if I jump once and do j.D~A/B/C I can airdash after that as usual, but if I try doing the same after jumping twice I can't" Hmm.. well if it's like this then it doesn't hurt that much. It simply means we just can't be too random with jump>drive~cancel. If anything, this coupled with the CS3 buff hints to a return to a CT-like rushdown type of game. That and, it's just first loketest, things might completely change in the next one.

Care to link me to that part? I can translate anything you throw at me.