tiers?

They could've been late in putting their ranks into Sega to have them changed.

There's a clip of Goro's Kamisama on my site. Name & ranks are in all the filenames, so it's easy to spot.

 

I think you lot are talking about the PS2 magazine tournament held by Sega right? Arashi took out Kyasao and Wolfy's Kages and the third guy too. I would disagree with steamrolled, I just think Wolfy and Kyasao were both playing pretty poorly in their matches, poor concentration or whatever, they let Arashi get away with too much IMO.

Anyway I'm thinking you are comparing Arashi's PS2 ranking with his arcade ranking perhaps?...

 

No. Those guys got those rankings on their arcade cards. The fact that Goro has one in a video proves it.

I'll look for the link and read who exactly was in the tournament. I don't recall Wolfy being there, although I'd think he was quite capable.

If you search for "Rankings" you should find a post I made with all the non-standard rankings. To my knowledge, there are 3 different rankings shared by 7 different players.

 

Seeing as how the topic has died down somewhat, let me see if I can stoke further debate.

GP:

While I think Ice's tiering is a bit closer, I would never in a million years put Jacky & Lion together, and I wouldn't put Pai in there either. There was a good post on Overweight the other day. "Lion is strong, but there's no 'easy high damage' combo. You've got no , and anything that floats requires a counter hit." The only exception I can think of is + which is really slow.

If Lion had easy and damaging combos, he would no doubt be the strongest character! Lion has so many useful pokes, a strong okizeme game, good throws, and more important, it's just so easy for him to force the opponent to guess. In fact, in most of the diagrams I've seen drawn up by the various Japanese guides, Lion ranks above Jacky. I just put Jacky over Lion in my tiering since Jacky seems much more versatile.

Also, while Shun was much stronger in Ver B., he still took quite a bit of skill to utilize. The only floater he has that does high damage and doesn't require counter is the Chowan - which is a mid, but does no damage if blocked low.

Version B Shun is all about the dodge punch. But more than that, Ver. B Shun with 10 drinks feels like Ver. C Shun with 20 drinks (estimating only) in terms of initiative and stuff guaranteed.

Version C Aoi's double stop was made throw counterable, and that was the main way she was made weaker, but that's a pretty big difference. Before, you could pretty much do the double stop after every move you try, but now it's become a 3 way guessing game (in C) since it was made special mid.


uk-guy:

Personally I'd like to see them tone done the backfist after the +. It is too strong a special high attack, especially canned-comboed into a powerhouse move like +. Either make it not special high so you can d+P interupt ala Lau's +, or take it away like I heard they did in on of the early test Evo's.

Jacky is -7 (I think) when you block his elbow back fist!! Anyway, in Evo it seems as if the back fist reanimated looks to completely linear...true?

Wolf:
Well he's still got the shoulder right? I do agree he is weak compared to the other heavy Jeffry, but don't give him back the knee!

With all this talk about Wolf being weaker because of his knee...is his knee still throw-counterable? Because if it is not...

Regards +, well it executes in something like 23frames so it is slow and only has real priority if you guess a straight high attack is coming. I think Kage needs it otherwise he doesn't have a decent ground floater, the new chop isn't strong enough to warrant toning down the + IMO.

I'm with you Mo. Kage absolutely NEEDS his , if not for the only reason that it's one of his better moves to force opponents to dodge to his back. And it's so slow that you pretty much have to anticipate the high attack...it's no elbow or heelkick that you can use to stuff people on sight. People keep pointing out that most of Akira's attacks are linear...well, Kage is just as bad in the respect.

Also, I'm 100% with you on the and .


summers:

About what you pointed out with the high/low level Jacky thing--exactly. Which is why I can't help but emphasize how this discussion is only relevant at the non-high levels. No doubt someone like Chibita would feel no different if a Jacky player or a Shun player is challenging him...it's not in the character, it's in the player.

It's only at our levels we may feel otherwise, unfortunately.

 

Lion is strong, but there's no 'easy high damage' combo.

I agree lion is up there, roughly translated notes from another mag said pretty much that his strengths are guessing games, and good recovery on a lot of moves (despite slow windup). Standard lion combos that do ~40%: just end any combo starter in P -> df+P,P -> ground attack. alternately end in K,K. where the float is high enough, and where it's not just df+P,P, ground attack.

Agreed to leave jacky's backfist alone, tho if they made lau's throw counterable, I wonder why they might not bother with jackys? prolly cuz lau's is more consistent, it reaches a hair further and never misses after elbow staggers.

Added utility to kage's worthless kicks would be a nice touch. At least make the yoshimitsu style jackass roll-n-thrust float really high and be impossible to stuff. Tho it'd look tekkeny then.

Wolf has been called weak by neotower due to the flakiness of the knee. Where once you could get the P, b+P, pounce on no counter vs some and with counter vs almost everyone, you now are at a frame disadvantage on normal hit, no combo possible, no knockdown... and on counter it crumples which limits guaranteed followups pretty much to f+P,P.

 

Ice:

Good points. I'll leave it at that. Even as an Aoi lover, I think the double-stop should've been throw-counterable.

Your also right about Shun in Ver B vs. Ver. C. I could never pull off two Chowan's in a row at the time Ver. B was out, so I always felt he was rather weak. They did rape him a bit much though.

About Wolf:
The knee is definitely a downer for most Wolf people. Everyone knows my opinions on it. He still has a lot of high damage moves. However, nobody can ignore the fact that he's definitely not what he used to be. Case in point, I've played Vanessa maybe a total of 15-20 times since Evo came out (and was only at 4-dan w/ her at Ver. C). I was able to beat Bun Bun Maru with her. Sad, no?

 

I was able to beat Bun Bun Maru with her. Sad, no?

well...I've only watched videos which aren't a true indicator of a person's skill but Bun Bun never seemed to be all that good in VF4. So maybe he is bad in Evo because he wasn't that good at 4? I don't know how true that is, I'm just throwing it out there.

Plus, I haven't seen a Bun Bun vid in a while so maybe he's uber powerful again.

GE

 

Rankings from Dengeki PS for Version C:

1) Lau
2) Akira, Jeffry, Sarah (tie)
3) Lion
4) Jacky
5) Kage
6) Vanessa
7) Pai
8) Lei Fei
9) Wolf
10) Aoi
11) Shun

Staffers who came to this conclusion include Muscle Sarah and Sega-ru.

 

Oh my that looks like mine. God, I hope my tiers weren't somehow subconsciously derived from this one...

 

It's interesting to me that the upper half of the list is comprised of
the characters whose VF fighting styles are either fictional completely
(Lau, Jeffrey) or sketchily related to the source art (Lion, Sarah), while
the more authentic representations (Lei, Aoi, Shun) operate on the bottom of
this list. I guess though that, according to Jet Li (say what you will about his
Hollywood movies, but the man is a 100% real-life wushu badass) the fighting styles
are adapted to the fighter, meaning not everyone will use the Shaolin Boxing
the same way, because it's specific to them. At least Chinese arts that's the case. So even if Lau's Koen-Ken is
made up, it could be looked at as a version of Shaolin Tiger Fist, but adjusted to Lau's
physical dimension. Anyway, it doesn't matter, as far as VF is concerned.
There are character basics and there are character nuances, and the good players will
find the nuances in Aoi or Lion and turn them into nightmares. The average guy will not tap
into those nuances immediately, so his Aoi and Lion will be weak; but character basics,
that built-in easy-to-access damage that Jacky and Lau can produce, will
enable the average Lau to rip an average Aoi. IMO. What I think is more
important is the starter levels for the characters, and that new folks kind-of
need them. I started with Shun as the first character, and spent a lot of time
worrying about trying to get Shun to do what I needed him to. But I didn't
learn how to play the game, or see opponents to recognize what about
them I could avoid. Then I used the easy Lau approach, and could stop
worrying about the stances and the movelist of Shun. From there, it was
Lei who combines high damage with a higher ceiling for intricacy. And then
Aoi, who requires even more attention to nuance. Through it all, my Shun
play still smells of swamp mud...still, the evolution process in VF is fascinating,
and recommended for all Laus and Jackys out there.

 

My most recent vid of him, iirc from am2, had him at 66-68 percent.
Not bad but not segirl or sasukino lau etc.

One out of three random challengers beats him and GP was one of them. So it's pretty arguable that this was the player and not the character. I still think that if neotower says wolf's below bottom tier, even if he's prone to exaggerate, wolf is definitely worse (though not helpess).

 

BBM is somewhere around 50% now. (450 wins 450 losses) or thereabouts. The only reason I always assumed he was good was b/c he was in Chupa Chaps.

Segaru was up to 10-dan when I saw him last, at about 80% wins. It seems he's adapted. Most Shun players adapted as well when Ver. C came out. At that time, I was 4-dan, went down to shodan, then eventually up to 7-dan in the course of several months. Took a lot of practice though.

 

Actually I don't think Pancratium is made up--I saw a couple of UFC episodes with guys of this martial art. But I do think most of Jeffry's moves in VF are made up.

As for BBM, the guy is not really considered an "elite" player like his fellow C-Chappers. His fame from VF2 and to a lesser degree VF3 carries him. He's still pretty good, but obviousy, no player with a 50% win rate can be considered elite. Considering how he was 60% when I was last in Tokyo, does this suggest he lost more than he won since??

Wolf seems much more like a mid-distance fighter now. His sidekick has really long range. The two clips of Segaru has him dashing back and forth and poking with sidekick, +, Giant Swing, and that new SF3-Alex-looking-rush-uppercut. Seems like a risky strategy. I'm sure AM2 compensated somehow, but we don't know yet as a result of no frame stats.

Remember that it took a while before people figured out Lau's hop kick gave so much frame advantage.

 

Well, when you were here, Evo had been out all of a good two or three days. He could've easily gone from 100% to 20%, as he would've played a lot of games since then.