Awesome rundown, Sirlin. I don’t suppose you have whiteboard scrawlings for Arg and Lum just yet?
I’m also looking forward to the Geiger revision. As much as I love the character, I think he’s actually the most boring character atm. :C I wanna be able to enjoy repping time man! More tricks is exactly what I want, with time stop being my favorite aspect atm.
Some of my own thoughts:
I’ll add that Grave is pretty well rounded, as fireballs give him pretty good chip pressure for aggression. (Especially meaty big fire ball. Follow that one up with another fireball followed by sword swing when they’re at 1 for a pretty hard to escape chipout!)
It should also be noted that Rook’s Ground Super is really busted and pretty much prevents the other guy from throwing fireballs from anywhere closer than “direct opposite side of the screen”, unless they want to take 3 and a knockdown, lol.
Valerie demands answers immediately once she’s in, almost certainly the fastest chipper in the game and is usually crazy plus (or perhaps just plus enough to frame trap) basically all the time. If you don’t have a panic button ready when she makes you block, get ready for the next round. (Setsuki and DeGrey are probably the two most vulnerable. DeGrey has to land the super or lose, and Setsuki has to pray for a gap or mistake in Val’s rushdown to escape!)
Geiger is really really safe, but lacks combo potential without meter, often only netting 2. This character is like “no risk, low reward.” Probably the grodiest supers in the game, with cycloid being a meaty, chippy death sentence on low health guys and time stop having a million different applications from escapes to combo extension to nasty strike/throw 50/50s with time spiral, to free fireball war victories. My personal vote for best char in the game atm.
Setsuki writeup is pretty much the size of it. She can actually net 5 if you disrespect the meaty kunai! So uh, don’t do that lol.
DeGrey’s counterhit aspect is hard to utilize, but gives him nasty burst damage. Sometimes you get counterhit by pilebunker and die, oops. Beyond that, he’s very much focused on varying up the timings of his blockstrings to open up the enemy to ghosting or a counter hit, while downbacking against him opens up a nasty crossup into more pressure. mixup doing A, AA, A b.A, A dandy, A ghost, AA ghost, and off of dandy use the lunge punch to continue pressure or empty dandy -> throw to keep them guessing. He’s a mixup monster who gets high reward for making his opponent panic, but his answers to zoning are pretty limited and predictable.
Nothing to add about Midori or Jaina, oops.
Anyway, yeah, characters in this game are overall simple enough that you really can play all of them at a competent level if you have fighting game knowhow, with Setsuki and DeGrey probably overall being the most complicated. I love it!