Thanks for your optimism Dacid.
People here are simply worried, and why shouldn't they be?
His primary overhead is slower
His cloud is slower
Party Bug is summoned further
Curse on block is nerfed
He has no loops in curse
Curse damage has been nerfed
Jump is now the slowest
Back dash is more stiff
So telling just by the loctest, my personal verdict notwithstanding;
He has
no mix ups
no offense
no defense
no zoning
No mix ups mean that he won't do very well vs a turtling opponent, since curse on block is nerfed, he can't do much, his slow overhead is even slower, he can't get any real ground and zone, cloud is slower, bell is summon further and j.d still doesn't trade.
And even on the rare instance he gets curse, the damage have been nerfed, and slower overhead still plays a part here.
But this is just for the time being. The only optimism we have to hold onto is remembering we have a second DD. The new 6b is nice though, but with no mix up, it's pretty useless.
Now personally, his punishing game got aesthetically better, but everything else is overall worse than how he was in CS1.
This isn't really pessimism, but simply the facts given.
Now a few of us are discussing how to work around them, but other than l2block and doing 1 rep of every curse loop we have, there isn't much to work with.
How do we work around a slower 6a, you (allegedly) 2d that shit on reaction, how are we going to work around that? The question of his air combos and dive cancels are thrown into question about his 6 frame jump. His best defensive maneuver is toned down, his back dash, so he's stuck blocking, which I already do unless I fear getting mixed up.
But how do we work around less curse meter with block with even worse mix up than we came in with?
How do we work around slower and less involved zoning? His zoning was already the weakest in the game precurse. Tager's 5c zoned better than Arakune.
Some things don't have a work around.