Same, Free games like brawlhalla and multiversus have had free characters in training mode for years and somehow modern paid fighting games can't seem to catch on
@@youcantbeatDbecuz free to play games make money off of ppl buying cosmetic if ppl in the fgc spent as much money on that as ppl who play those types of games they might but then again I'd also rather pay for dlc then have 2 play arcade mode 20 times to u lock a character or buy the whole game over again for 4 more characters
I remember starting Central Fiction and Ragna basically telling the player that Nine is just too much. “God your moves are as broken as ever” or something along those lines.
@bungerthatoneguy AND he would just mess around continuously just letting his minions distract them before appearing behind then just saying boo then shooting them in there face with his gun
To be somewhat fair, Annie is in Skullgirls. Ms. Fortune headless corner pressure can get up to full seconds of blockstun, Beowulf can one-shot people and is tournament viable, giving Annie all the greatest shoto hits on crack is totally understandable as a design choice
@@notimeforcreativenamesjust3034 And somehow, at the end of the day, way, WAY more honest of a character than Vergil. Yes, even release Annie. I know I’m a crackhead complaining about somebody smoking meth here, but what the hell is going on in MVC
To this day I dont know what is worse, the fact that they were $15, or the fact that since there were barely any balance patches back then, they are still the reigning champs of the game
Some additional perspective on Leroy: Tekken moves generally follow rules and trade-offs to ensure the majority of moves are "fair", e.g. fast low attacks are also - on hit, or safe homing mids have slow start up. Part of what makes characters distinct is that they will have a few defining tools that are intentionally "unfair", e.g. Kazumi's B2 was a fast, safe, mid homing move. Leroy's intended character defining tools were his amazing set of defensive options, consisting of his 1,1 jab string, his fast, safe, mid B1+2 counter hit launcher and a special class of Parry that was able to beat typically unparryable moves. The issue is Leroy also had everyone else's signature moves, his orbital was faster and safer than Bryan's, his FF3 was a homing EWGF, his D1+2 was a better pressure tool than most pressure characters had access too, and to top it all off he was blessed with some of the best pokes, including an amazing DF1, the go to mid poke for the majority of the cast. Chances were that whatever character you wanted to play had their best moves matched or outclassed by Leroy, and even if those moves held up he definitely outclassed them as a whole by virtue of having everyone else's best moves. He was in the same vein as Luke, being a master of all trades, only really being contested by Akuma and to a lesser extent Geese, who sported unique mechanics that allowed them to circumvent or dominate traditional Tekken neutral in ways no other characters could.
nice summary, and it still doesn't cover all the busted stuff he had. the original cane was also totally absurd and his lows did unconscionable damage. it was just an absolute travesty of a character, and something they clearly did on purpose. overall, a baldly scummy move on their part.
The biggest reason why happy chaos was meta defining isn't his gun pressure or roll mixups, they're still around and keep him good, it was the the ability to loop steady aim into reload with a small gap. As soon as he got a knockdown or even after a successful burst, he could just hit you with steady aim over and over from full screen, always reloading the bullet he just fired, and once he ran out of concentration after ~6 steady aim shots, he'd use his concentration super to do it all over again. Each shot did fat chip damage and guard crush so you had to use all your meter to fd, you could do micro walks/runs forward into fd between shots but from full screen hed get at least 5-6 shots and on characters like goldlewis and Ino, they could barely move. You weren't allowed to jump (and ino couldn't dash) bc air blocking the shots sent you flying back, and if you got hit bc he changed up the timing or you just held back a little too late, he could often combo you into a wall stick, concentrate, break the wall with super to get his bullets back, curse to gain distance and creat instant lock-on, and use positive bonus to loop it all over again with 2-3 concentration supers using the boosted meter build for 15-20 seconds of lockdown. And even if you got in, he could suddenly break the loop to run his mixup (remember its a guard crush so he got free throw mix as well, and he still has full bullets) and if he got you, you're getting comboed into wall slump into corner pressure or wall break back into the steady aim loops. While he still can technically do the loops, the loss of guard crush and the higher concentration cost when he fires at a distance made it much much weaker, and the final concentration nerf was just to help weaken him as a whole bc he was still overtuned altho not as stupid ridiculous as he was with steady aim loops. Tl;dr The fact that anytime he got a hit or even successfully burst he got to put you into a game of full screen red-light, green-light with little risk to himself and full resources back if you messed up is what made him so insanely meta defining.
yeah that red light green light was HELL pre-patch especially. I will forever remember the convention tourney I entered during my Testament era (mained Nago before Testament released & currently maining Asuka because I like my Phoenix Wright on crack) where I was just locked out of doing ANY of my setups because I was spending 90% of the game blocking his gun.
As dumb as SFV Luke was, I do love how in hindsight, his VT functionality was basically a stealth preview of 6's drive gauge. Can't say I've ever seen fighting game mechanic based foreshadowing too often. Fantastic video!
The best thing about Luke in the last season (after the very very very slight nerf) was rooting against him, no matter who was playing him, in big tournaments.
@@TheCJRhodes nope the best thing about Luke is having crowds all cheering "MEMPHIS" during his super. everyone loves luke these days especially since he's nowhere near as oppressive as he was during season one
I think the reason why dlc characters are strong is cause by the time they come out the developers have a better understanding what makes a character work in the game they are in thanks to players pointing out who’s strong and who’s weak
Also how developers typically try new or different mechanics that can’t always be tested and balanced well before the public gets access to it. At least in this video, Luke essentially gets an sf6 drive gauge version of a v-trigger, which gives him a distinct mechanical advantage over the rest of the roster. Smash and Tekken 7’s guest characters are probably the biggest examples due to trying to get another game character’s mechanics in a game they aren’t exactly built for.
It's also the fact that a large chunk of the move list is made up of strings. Like a df1, df1,2 and df1,1 will all be listed separately. Generally you'll have a move for every directional input and every button. Add a few strings on top of that and that's all your moves. Granted, you have outliers like stance characters and King with his fifty chain grabs.
He was quite literally a playable SNK boss that was designed with subtly instead of the usual 'utterly and clearly broken moves/mechanics'. He was just better, at everything, than everyone else.
Bardock lowkey killed my love for DBFZ. There was no reason to NOT use him. He wasn't the most busted character ever released, but he was so good at everything that he could easily slot in anywhere. His assist was great, he could spend meter like a fat kid eats cake, his damage was good to great, and he was EVERYWHERE for like a year. Him and Cell won so many early tournaments that it just became repetitive.
@@AshuraGC Hasn't Bardock still been a very solid character since his top tier days? Like, maybe not the best, but absolutely one of the stronger characters?
@@LloydTheZephyrianno. Like stated in the video, he just kept on going lower and lower and eventually settled near the bottom of the tier list. He doesn’t really have anything over most characters and what he used to have is almost universal or non existent in the game. For one, lot of moves were changed or first implemented (in newer characters) to work like his lariat, which is something I noticed before I stopped playing the game.
@@LloydTheZephyrianyou can look at the original comment and quite literally flip it completely. There’s 0 reason to use bardock at this point. He’s not bad by any means, but there’s a handful of characters that do everything he does but better. Take blue vegito as an example.
Not to point the accusation your way Happy Chaos's "weak defense" is one of the biggest downplays of all time lol. No DP but the reward for mashing was a corner to corner wallbreak.
He’s not lying about weak defense per se, his defense is the weakest in the game post-knockdown due to having no invincible options even with meter. It’s more the conversion game you’re talking about because his conversions were and are still fucked up
HCs defense is awful. He only has access to the universal options. Granted if he gets a burst off you have to get in on him again. He is stuck with a 5 frame and I don’t think his 2K is a 4 frame low profile. Character is still fucked up though.
@@leboiofbois1005 I think discounting the burst is a mistake, he was better than any other character at using it since it went straight into his win con. My main protest is just the risk/reward on his abare though. I don't think his defense is as good as the characters with real DP's but I do think it was way better than other characters with bad defense. Before he got hit new move getting 5P'd by Potemkin you were probably still in an advantageous position.
I do notice a pattern of final DLC characters usually being broken. Because they no longer need to worry about ruining the rep for future sales. Like Bayonetta in Smash 4; and Android 21 in Fighterz; Luke in SF5 which I didn't know, but hey.
I don't think the devs entirely mean to drop busted ass final DLC characters. They intend for someone strong and then because it's the final DLC they stop developing on it. Which means no balance changes that would normally tap their ass down.
Here's a more obscure one for your list: Them's Fighting Herds' final DLC character, Baihe. She was literally broken. And I don't mean that as hyperbole, they rushed the patch out the door as the developers were being shut down, and needed to fill obligation of people who bought her as part of a season pass. She could spend a majority of the match literally invulnerable, and had moves that would crash the game if you comboed them. They did release one final patch to try to fix her, but I'm not sure how well it did. There's a video by PocoQuinn that describes just how broken she was on release, that just gets worse, and worse, and worse as it goes.
Aah thanks for talking about KI! Great summary on Rash (and great vid overall). The meme of him being really easy with no drawback will probably follow him forever. If Omito played KI, he would easily grant Rash the Artumeto Gorilla title. You hinted at it in the video, but to expand on what made wrecking ball so oppressive was that it could armor pretty much everything, put you in really bad disadvantage if it hit, and was much safer than it is now. His tongue was/is a really obnoxious movement and pressure tool, which gave him mixup potential and resets that other characters had to work harder for (Wulf) or had their kits completely balanced around (Shago). His main flaws were that his pressure was not completely gapless, so characters like RAAM could eat him for breakfast if he overextended and not having meter for SBBB really hurt his disadvantage. People will probably always hate Rash, but picking someone up, going crazy on the stick and throwing them will never not be funny.
For real. Such an interesting design for a character, needing to balance two resources to get access to his best tools, only for him to be really good without them and absolutely busted with them.
I might me talking out of my rear but I think the reason Happy Chaos took so long to nerf was because Arcsys didn't just want to nerf the character, they also wanted to buff him in ways that reinforced the playstyle they had in mind for the character, which I believe is the spot he is in now
@@rimzaaah5892it comes down to team synergies mostly. On his own he lacked mix, strong anti-air, and has both the pros and cons of being a persona character (reduced effectiveness of push block from opponent i exchange for the risk of getting melted by "Persona Break" which is to say you getting hit with extra damage if your persona moves whiff and they hut the persona. What made him strong can be summed up really quickly though: Maziodyne and Assists. At pretty much any range if you were hit with Maziodyne it was a full conversion and if he got that hit, you were going to NEED to exoend the meter for a break or you were going to watch your character get looped for iirc around 7k very easily. He was never the most broken character imo but he was hated because he was very "Pick up and play" and paired obnoxiously well with other pick up characters like Yu Narukami and Hyde. This meant someone could very easily pick up the game, go (especially common) Yu and Adachi and just melt you with autocombos and basic specials usage. Yumi is much more of a problematic example as well as characters like Akatsuki and BB Naoto.
Quick correction on Kuon in UNI2, he's not a bonus fighter you get for buying the game's season pass. You can unlock Kuon and his theme by completing Arcade Mode with specific characters. Buying the season pass did unlock him instantly though. Only reason I know this for sure is because the launch version on Switch didn't get me his awesome theme. So I had to do all the Arcade Modes just to get the theme anyways lol
This video definitely deserves a part 2. There are so many examples. A few Smash characters come to mind, even though I know so many people don't consider Smash a "serious" fighting game.
I don't care what anyone says, most cases of OP DLC characters are just misguided attempts at making characters that suit the meta, yes, but Bandai Namco does this shit on purpose. It is not a shock that 3 of their biggest fighting games (Tekken, Fighterz, Smash Bros., it counts for this topic) all have downright predatory DLC characters that are easy, overpowered, and basically mandatory to play or even just learn to play against at all. The pinnacle of this is Tekken 7 selling frame data as DLC. That is blatant pay-to-win bullshit, and Bamco knows this. Hell, all the way back in Street Fighter x Tekken, they were the pioneers of scummy DLC, with on-disc DLC. We see how Capcom does DLC, and we see how Bamco does DLC, it's very obvious who wanted to squeeze every last dime out of their loyal fans for minimal effort.
My favorite instance of a new character dropping being absolutely broken is when Mauga dropped on OW2. He was insanely busted and overtuned at the time he came out, which caused a lot of competitive players to just use only him in higher ranked play. All the other tank's viability got lowered severely just from how strong Mauga was. There was one caveat to that though and it was the fact that Mauga could only be played early if you bought the OW2 battle pass. If you didnt, you would have to grind up to lvl 40 on the battle pass to unlock him for free. For half of that initial season Mauga dropped, it was very much p2w and my favorite story to come out of it was there had been a guy who initially didnt care about Mauga or the battle pass, but knew of the threat the character was. Mid comp match, he got so tired of playing against the enemy teams Mauga, he told his team he'd be back and BOUGHT THE BATTLE PASS TO PLAY MAUGA EARLY SINCE HE HADNT HIT LVL 40 YET. the best part about it too was he knew nothing about the character and somehow still won the entire game after his $10 purchase.
Funny you say that, because one of the animators working on the game (Zone) is *literally* an early 2010s Newgrounds NSFW artist, in fact the reason she got hired was because everyone on the team was very impressed by a Skullgirls _porn parody_ she made!
As someone who was on newgrounds prior to that and is a dedicated Sg player, this thought never crossed my mind, have you considered that you may be a cumbrained beater?
This channel went from talking about SRB2 (the only Sonic game I like) to talking about fighting games (my favorite genre of game). This channel was made for me. Keep up the good work Based God.
best part about bardock was that his auto combo had a relatively unique anti-float where it would let you challenge air approaches like superdash with jab. At the time this was pretty unheard of as most autocombos would lead to people being floated out of combos if you jabbed superdash
I didn't play BlazBlue during that age but I remember people saying Kokonoe was beyond busted when she debuted. Also a lot of DLCs in BBTAG (Yumi, Tank, Adachi) were hella strong buuut that might be obvious since there was a lot of dlc in that game haha.
Just found you and binged your videos last night before bed, and I get a brand new video when I wake up? So unbelievably zased. Keep doing what you’re doing man, love the content
ik how the meta shouldn't justify the concept of "fun" for just a few players, but boy, i had SO MUCH fun with bardock. being the small latino lad i was, e grew up with A LOT of dragon ball, but bardock's movie was special for me. not only because i had a strong connection with it at first, but because it was my first bootleg dvd. it was MINE, different from all the stuff there was at the house i was raised with many cousins. we weren't starving poor, but having a dvd player at the time for my family was very much just a luxury and non-essential. as i grew older and i could watch dragon ball in my mother's first computer, downloading it from piracy sites, i finally watched the whole thing and bardock was still my favorite character. i got dbfz close to the launch, and enjoyed all the no. 16, cell and black goku meta, buuut bardock dlc was heaven for me. i just had SO MUCH fun playing the best character, and watching pros picking him all the time. i know nostalgia talks a lot for me abt this time of the game, but as an introvert child in a poor family, with a few friends, that bootleg dvd was one of the few things i could call mine and go back to "whenever i wanted" (more like "whenever i could", but hey, what did i know, right?). i was so glad i could see bardock all the time in dbfz. it was like when i was young and i would play that movie on repeat whenever nobody was using the tv and the dvd player.
Both were in my notes when I began working on the video but I couldn't find a good way to capture footage of either Smash 4 or Smash Ultimate unfortunately
@@Guitar-Dog Bayo needed one touch to win in a game where 2 stock was standard. Steve invalidates a lot of the cast and does everything. This pails on comparison to ssbb meta knight however lmao.
Okay I think the video is great but I do have some feedback for the Happy Chaos section (for context Ive played Strive since S1 and hung around the comp scene until fairly recently, played in tons of tournaments and am very confident in my knowledge for this game): 21:21 Okay so here I have a small nitpick with the idea that Goldlewis was bad, because he really wasnt. The Goldlewis playerbase just gaslight people into thinking he sucks, but he was a pretty solid mid tier at the time. He just sucked to play because he is the epitome of "Cant Get In, will Kill you if he does" so he felt like he couldnt do shit until he got into his best range, but once he did you had to deal with really obnoxious approach options like 9jD, which is near impossible to anti-air on reaction and is very disjointed for an air button, and him just swinging his super disjointed coffin that did extreme numbers on you with chip damage. Couple that with old FD that made the opponents moves more plus, you can see how stupid this made Golds typhoon pressure. That said FD was changed around the same time HC released so Goldlewis had it worse then, especially with how the meta with HC was shaped. 22:18 Correction, both of these stances were absolutely broken, Steady Aim was the one used more in S1 for the "zoning" HC style that Deb/Romolla (who showed the world Guard Crush loops with HC for the first time) and Umisho popularized, while At The Ready was used for the "mixup" HC style that players like Tigerpop made infamous. What ultimately makes present day At The Ready the more "broken" stance is the fact that HCs buffs and nerfs made him lean towards "mixup" style more than "zoning" each and every patch. 22:58 AtR stances reticle will actually have a slight delay before locking on making it possible to backdash or move out of the way of the reticle before the gunshot connects, note this is not possible with Curse applied as Curse will automatically make the reticle lock on much faster. This is why jumping over curse is so important, as with curse HC can transition from "zoning" to offense with you being almost unable to do anything about it if he is close enough. Also as a sidenote, the starting reticle position is completely random, but it can end up being on your opponent, and if HC is in stance and whiffs a button, he can whiff cancel into gunshot and it has a roughly 1/3 chance to hit. This is referred to as "whiff gunshot" and is commonly cited as being something everyone playing the game (including a fair few HC players) want removed or reworked. 24:34 Roll used to be much easier to block back in S1, I cant remember of the top of my head what specifically changed but if I recall right you could FD to either make roll easier to see and block on crossup or just not crossup entirely. This got changed with HC rebalancing in S2, where to sum it up they nerfed his broken "zoning" and made his offense stronger and more rewarding. 24:48 Just a slight correction, while clone could be used defensively it was mostly used offensively after knockdown to lock people in place, but you could also use it in neutral as a wall since while HC could pass through it you couldnt. But Scapegoat oki is some of the most degenerate okizeme Ive had to hold, Im surprised it took this long for people to figure out how broken it was, as dealing with it required a hit into a cancel or a RC, otherwise HC could delay his button on your wakeup to hit on the same frame that he would throw you, being protected from abare (and if spaced correctly wakeup throw) thanks to Scapegoat eating one hit for HC, but I think this was rarely if ever used to the full extent of its power, though you might find a Tigerpop clip that uses this exact strategy at some point in his matches, as when he played HC (and still playing ABA) he liked to go for unconventional but strong okizeme that he very often found himself. 25:42 Here, just a note that HCs gauge will also drain more the farther and less the closer you are. This was one of his changes in S2 that made him more viable as a mixup character instead of a zoner. Minute detail but probably good to mention. 27:02 Note that HC is definitely not worthless without his resources, but he is a lot worse without them. But compared to a character like Asuka who literally cannot use his special moves outside of Mana Refill and Overdrives if he runs out of mana and takes extra damage, HC is a lot more of a threat even without concentration or bullets, especially because he can recover from these states very well with Tension (namely if he cancels button into concentration super he is very plus). He is still not a very good character without it however, so if thats what you wanted to communicate then I think you succeeded, but I think "worthless" is a tad bit too strong. Overall though, for (I assume) not having Strive as your main game, you did very well and I think the HC section is very good. Take my feedback as mostly nitpicks and addendums to stuff youve already said, that would probably require its own video if made into a script. With that said, much love from Czechia, I absolutely love your videos, please keep up the good work. Im praying for your channel to grow even more than ever, you deserve 100k subs already imo. Edit: wrote anti-air instead of air button in the Goldlewis section plus some grammatical errors so I fixed it.
Great video! Tanya from MKX would've also been a notable mention. There were so many Tanyas in top 8 of CEO 2015 just after she was released. But I guess this channel is not that focused on NRS games. Anyway, amazing content.
Labcoat 21 from db will always be the biggest mistake of a character I’ll see. I find it hard to imagine someone could put out a more disgusting character.
Smash 4 Bayonetta was a menace. She dominated tournaments. She practically escorted characters to the blast zone. It came to a head when Smash Ultimate was showed off. There was a demonstration between pros and everyone had a choice between the previous characters and a couple new characters. The details are a bit foggy, but someone played Bayonetta against Ridley. It was meant to basically show off how cool the new characters were, and I'm sure you can see where this went. Ridley got _destroyed_ by Bayonetta. It was basically a message from the community about how broken she was. When Ultimate came out, she was massively nerfed. Kazuya and Steve _wish_ they were as big a destructive force as Smash 4 Bayonetta.
The fact that you let the audience figure out on their own that Rash's rainbow skin is in fact a reference to that one frog meme (I alsmost said Dat Boi but then used my brain) is a very good show of your character
The game is inspired by mvc afterall, so some Dante and Vergil moves were def used for her (also Dante magical girl and bunny Vergil, peak peak PEAAAK)
Okizeme just means applying offense to a character who's waking up on the ground. Knockdowns are always strong due to how much they limit the opponent's options so they're a good opportunity to take your turn and get your pressure going.
Just to clarify, the reason leroy was so good wasn't necessarily his damage, it was that every move he had was better than any other version of that move, and he had all of them. Orbital was good because it was 2 frames safer and faster than the bryans, his b1+2 was good because it was i12 so essentially a magic 4 but mid. He also had a ch confirmable string from a jab that wallsplatted and did like 40 damage which was safe at the time. I think the move that most players actually find the most problematic was his d1+2 because it basically did everything. Good on hit, neutral on block, hit from range 3, had good tracking, fast, ch launched.
Dropping a sub NOT because of how well made this video is. Its very well made and incredibly interesting, dont get me wrong, but anyone who uses MMZ4's ost in a video is automatically goated in my book,
Don't forget that in S2 of Strive, we had the wall stick meta. A lot of Strive was designed around the fact that it you do enough damage to your opponent, you fly through the wall and go back to neutral. Except, Happy Chaos just said no. On top of his crazy mix he could hit you in such a way that you'd stick to the wall, he'd regenerate resources, and then rather than flying across the screen off the wall or through the wall to neutral like normal, you'd fall down in front of him, stuck in the corner for another round of mix. He could do this as long as he wanted, until he had full meter for HKD and mix post wall break, or could even get Positive Bonus in some extreme cases, all of which would allow him to loop back into situation when very very few others reliably could, especially off such ridiculous buttons like 5P or a blocked 5D. He was nuts.
LordKnight made a very insightful observation about DBFZ's later developments, in that ArcSys basically turned everyone's normals into Bardock's lariat. That on top of the nerfs not only made Bardock's lariat not as appealing, but the fact that normals can gatling into more attacks and be special canceled to extend pressure meant that the lariat was now just a worse version than what pretty much everyone had in their kits.
Another aspect of happy chaos which I think makes him so good is his mobility. The fact that he can use the roll out of steady aim makes him so slippery, as well as opening new combo routes with the distance it covers. I love it!
About the comments on Umisho; following the recent changes to the DP mechanics she has picked back up Happy Chaos on top of her Sol. Even before that she kept him as a secondary, though.
Something really worth mentioning with Happy Chaos, going purely off memory, is that when played right he basically had no actual resource management. I don't 100% remember how it worked or the names of moves, but he has a ball projectile he could throw. This ball caused a debuff that either restored some of his Focus bar when shooting or made it cost less to shoot? I forget exactly which. The point is that it made the Focus bar way easier to manage. Also it APPLEID ON BLOCK. In other words, assuming I remember how it works correctly, a bouncing full screen projectile would essentially negate a massive chunk of the resource management. As for the bullets, like said in the video he was good at building bar so he could use Deus Ex just for the reload if needed. But more importantly, I don't know the exact frame data but he had a loop that was basically 214 > shoot > reload > repeat - Paired with the ball in the previous part, he rarely ever had to actually manage resources. That's all not even considering how the chip damage while small does build up and the fact that with the pushback and such, it meant that if put at full screen the opponent would have to advance and guard like a dozen times before being able to play again. If they got hit 1 time by guarding a little late it'd be like 20% and more distance.
It's something I appreciate about BB:CF. Characters like Es that came as later content sure are very strong - but not broken. If anything, Es in particular specifically ended up fitting real snugly into high A or maybe S tier, so to say, and ended up being a fantastic beginner-friendly character to give newbies a taste of "the top tier life" while also offering plenty to learn for true mastery. And current BB:CF just includes all DLC anyway, too.
Hi I can explain Leroy, the thing that made leroy as a guranteed SSS teir is that his tools had the best properties of its archetype like his DF1 being the best poke with follow ups like season 1 kazmi, Orbital is so evasive has range and safe like bryan, a hellsweep with okii like Kazuya and having tools that break the rules of tekken as his b1+2 being a 12 frame ch lunching mid those type of moves are either 11 frame highs or a 13-15 frame mid having a 12 frame safe mid ch luncher and his one time use staff with his generic tools was a bit too much, his damage was overtuned doing akuma level damage with guranteed follow ups after a wall combo, his whiff punishement was almost fullscreen with a follow up and his parry made pressuring him a challenge.
Leffen getting carried to one of the most anti-climactic EVO wins of all time on Happy Chaos' back is still one of my favorite images in recent fighting game history, the picture of the crowd where everybody is just stone-faced is so funny.
it made me so fucking happy checking the bracket for EVO 2024 (was watching the top 6s), seeing he was in the loser side, pulling up the top 24 stream & seeing *my own main knock his ass out of bracket right before the top 6*
I like how much the last character on the list stands out in terms of what the devs likely intended. Bardock is everyone's favorite edgy badass. Leroy, too, is presented as a badass in the lore, and even Tekken 8's story has him beat up Jin. Luke was supposed to set the new standard for the Street Fighter series as the representative of the next game. Happy Chaos is essentially the ultimate antagonist in the Guilty Gear story, having played a part in most bad things that have happened to the cast. Even Annie was a creator's pet of the Skullgirls devs, who they very likely wanted to implement as far back as when Beowulf was new, what with her involvement in his story. In comparison, Rash is *_really_* a goober. He's a weird retro character, like Mr. Game and Watch or R.O.B. in Smash. He doesn't fit in the setting of Killer Instinct nearly as well as Arbiter or General RAAM. He's goofy and out-of-place, but that goofiness also kicks everyone's asses. I think if the devs do typically make DLC characters overpowered on purpose, Rash is the least intentional case.
It's crazy how for a month in S3 people thought HC was high tier only for people to realize clone is broken and then go right back top tier now he got buffed in the recent patch
i mean they definitely usually try to make dlc characters strong. i dont think cases like these were planned to take over the meta, but they know no one is gonna spend 7 bucks on a trash character. but its also just natural that characters that come out at the end of a game's lifespans are stronger than the beginning characters. look at pokemon, yugioh, etc, power creep is insane. league of legends is the same way.
Notes on the Happy Chaos section: -Both of his stances were (and are) extremely powerful, but most GG players I know would tell you Steady Aim was actually scarier. In that stance, Happy Chaos could (and can!) cancel the recovery of exiting the stance into Focus or Reload. If you didn't predict that he'd go for Focus and immediately run at him, he could go right back to pressuring you from fullscreen. And he'd plus after one bullet reload, so you don't want to challenge that. Not until he starts reloading the full clip to punish your passiveness, anyway. This whole time, you also have to watch out for him just running up and starting pressure. -A key part of his dominance that you missed was his safety to burst. A lot of characters could occasionally enforce burst safe mixups or combos, but most could do this very rarely, and some couldn't do it at all. Happy Chaos, on the other hand, was almost always safe to burst during his combos AND his afforementioned fullscreen pressure. And this is what made Deus Ex Machina a busted super. It didn't actually matter that the move has a hard knockdown, because the only time this move was used was for wallbreak. On top of hitting the opponent anywhere on screen, allowing HC to super wallbreak off of his burst safe combos (a sentence which sounds insane just saying it), DEM did great damage even at high scaling, and in the right circumstances HC could Focus before using the super, putting him in a literally perfect pressure situation immediately after wallbreak. -Oh, and wallslump mix. I won't get into that, but it was messed up. -Finally, people didn't start to sweat about HC losing his spot at the top until Burst changes. Yes, the concentration nerfs were big, but arguably more important were actually the universal buffs to Burst. Burst went from short range to full screen, making burst safety a thing of the past. This was basically a targeted nerf to HC. -Also, HC really does have awful, awful defense. He's one of only two characters without a reversal super, which is horrible for him, especially since he's on the more fragile side of the cast.
33:09 The IPS isn't affected by the green bar. That's the undizzy (or drama bar in game terms), which was added quite a bit into the game's lifespan as the number of buttons skullgirls had still made for rather lengthy combos before the IPS kicked in. A big characteristic for Undizzy is that it doesn't go away immediately on resets and that it's accumulated based on the light/medium/heavy moves you are executing. It's also visually distinguishable from IPS as the burst indicators are green instead of red.
I still remember seeing the anniversary patch stream for KI that had Sajam as a guest for reactions. When the balance section came around, Keits ran down Rash's changes at the end. The exchange went like this: Keits: "Alright, the moment everyone has been waiting for, we have saved Rash for last." Sajam: "Lemme guess, you gave him nothing but buffs, right?" Keits: "We have a page and a half of nerfs."
I think you oversold lock-on of Happy Chaos's reticle, it was good in other ways. As long as you're moving, which in GG you will be, it can't lock on though there is a random chance that a shot could hit (which is frustrating in it's own right). He really needed the curse grenade to use shot in nuetral, but he can do it off every knockdown so it wasn't the biggest issue. Also the reticle would lock on much faster after an opponent blocked or got hit by an attack, so he didn't need the curse grenade for combos and blockstrings. Which synergized with his surprisingly good normals. Also, on release most decent happy chaos players could get around the reload requirement if they had good execution since iirc you could reload in between some hits of shot combos. This and a few other reasons (like being unable to block with the gun out) was why he was considered kinda hard to play and why whenever I encountered a HC around floor 7 or 8 it was a coin flip whether they actually knew how to play around the resources or if they knew what yo do you weren't cursed in nuetral.
Skullgirls has a couple of other really funny ones, From the first ever DLC batch Ms Fortune is arguably one of the best characters in the game still even with all the nerfs. Umbrella initially was seen as underwhelming but overtime the ridiculousness of her Ravenous State became very apparent and even after the most recent patch she still is quite devilish in Ravenous albeit in a more manageable manner, still has that Sniper Low though.
I feel like I have to mention Belial in Granblue Fantasy Versus here - when he released, he was so strong with many useful tools, among which was his crouching Medium (2M). While not a low, it was so fast, took him low to the ground and had so much advantage on block that only one character could challenge the button: Belial himself.
A couple of my personal favorites are Yumi and Adachi from BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle and the dreaded top 3 of Smash Ultimate. Yumi and Adachi both released at the same time towards the end of the game's support period, and are often referred to as the "eSports duo." Yumi has amazing neutral with good long range normals and projectiles that cause a short freeze on hit, as well as ridiculous damage output when she finds a hit, and a really strong set of assists. Adachi became the best support character in the game, sporting a beam assist the beat everything except supers, wall bounced on hit, had incredible blockstun, and was huge and hard to avoid. His other two assists weren't bad either (in BBtag you have all 3 assist, inputted by pressing neutral, forward, or back + assist,) and when he was on point he could call in his teammate, do the stronger medium version of his beam (the assist is based on the light version) which lasted longer did better damage and was larger but came out on a slight delay, and then active switch into his partner in order to completely skip neutral. Adachi isn't a slouch on point either, but his assist value alone skyrocketed him to top 5. Smash Ultimate's incredibly hated top 3 who all come from Fighter Pass 2, consisting of Minecraft Steve, Kazuya Mishima, and Pyra/Mythra (often called Aegis or Pythra for short,) are infamous for completely shoving their way into the top spots of the meta immediately on their individual releases. Steve has some of the most oppressive and unique stage control tools in the game. Placing blocks to wall out opponents and mine for resources combined the minecart being a plus on shield burst movement tool that becomes a moving command grab that gives full combo once he jumps out of it. Combine these with his really strong and weird to deal with normals, insanely high damage output, and stupid gimmicks like blocking the ledge with blocks. Steve is a monster in the meta, often considered the best in the game. Kazuya is a lot simpler to explain, he kills you in one touch almost every time he hits you. If you master Kazuya combos they range from doing over 100% and putting the opponent in a terrible spot to just being a guaranteed kill depending on the starter and stage positioning. Combined with his strong movement due to wavedashing, Electric being an insanely fast invincible launcher that's safe on shield and nearly impossible to punish even on whiff, and gimmicks like rage drive, Kazuya is probably the most hated of the 3 because of how little you get to actually play the game against him since you die from one mistake. Aegis are interesting since they're kind of two characters who share similar normals, air normals, and smash attacks with differing frame data and power, and they can be swapped between at any time by pressing down + special. Pyra is a brick shithouse who does insane damage on individual hits and can kill VERY early, and Mythra compliments this very well by being sacrificing range and kill power for speed, mobility, and much lower base knockback giving her incredible combo capability. If you're familiar with Smash Mythra is commonly referred to as Sheik with a Sword while Pyra is called Ike with good frame data, and I think those descriptions are accurate.
"clone is a defense tool" you'd be correct until you realize that clone restricts player movement and blocks DPs. You're essentially allowed to do whatever you want when you have clone in the corner.
If I could add a couple, Bayonetta in Smash 4 (assuming that even counts), Kat in PSAS (assuming THAT counts), and Risotto Nero (or Wonder of U, but I would argue Risotto was a bigger monster) in JJASBR are also big contenders for over centralizing meta as well.
I could talk for a million years about how overturned Annie (and later Umbrella) were, especially leading up to EVO 2022. For Annie, one thing that wasn't mentioned was quite a few large tournaments were played on the Annie "Beta" which was essentially pre-retail release + some reworks for characters like Beowulf and Eliza. During this pre-release, Sonic played Solo Annie and absolutely destroyed the competition due to how insanely strong she was compared to the rest of the cast. For starters, her base combo at 1.0 scaling did almost 9k damage. That's more than anyone else in the cast (except Big Band) at the time and was essentially half a life-bar of a 3 character team. Her pillar of creation super cost only 1 bar, tracked and had 2 hits, could hit full screen, and was -6 on BLOCK and +30 on hit. You could fullscreen punish any move in the game and even if the opponent blocked, they wouldn't be able to punish unless they were right next to you. Her jHP had an even larger hitbox leading to insane 50/50 high/low left/right mixups that were unmashable and it even vorterxed off certain assists. Her H North Knucle assist had so much blockstun that if the opponent blocked it, you could always take your turn and enforce your mixups. It was also multi hitting and comes out so fast that it trades with most other full screen assists such as H Bomber or H beam. H North Knuckle being so good and getting nerfed on release is a large part of why it took so long to realize how strong Annie DP Assist is. Annie Install was even more + on Beta meaning you could install and so long as you had meter, you would beat and/or trade favorably with whatever your opponent did. Its also mentioned in the video but Annie install summoned stars that appeared after pressing any move, not just heavy buttons. Its funny looking back at pre-EVO Skullgirls and seeing just how much stupid stuff we put up with just because we were excited for new characters.
The one DLC character I think was the most broken is Alien's Acid form in MKX. Her tail attacks covered about 2/3 of the screen and had a good anti-air across all her forms, but in acid they also sprayed acid everywhere, that turned into a puddle on the ground if you dodged the projectile, which also allowed for restand combos, especially in the corner, and added a DOT that stacked each time you got hit allowing for a lot of damage, and finally the puddles could stop you from sprinting while you were on them, so the corner was a deathtrap. Throw in a command dash that low profiled projectiles, an incredibly strong air-to-air that sprayed acid and several strong 50/50s, and she was strong at basically all distances.
Good stuff on SG but there's one character, one character that even after her rework she Remains one of the Most ridiculous High damaging characters in current day. Canopy Kingdoms' 2nd to the thrown, The Saltiest child ever conceived, Umbrella Renoir. Good resets An Instant overhead(that gets Faster once her World eating Rain protector enters "ravenous") One of the safest DHC's in SG Stupidly good damage And Her Overstuff rework giving her heavy armor on her 5HP. And her having multiple ways to make characters with armor think twice before using it. She hasn't won a lot, But Nope.avi Got pretty Close at Evo 2023(Before she got reworked)
This video cost me $53 to make
Enjoy!
You'll make that money back brother, since your content always slaps so no worries.
i genuinely appreciate that metric; its good stuff to know
How did you spend any money making a video
Probably buying the dlc's@@JaxEntersEvasion
tax writeoff baybee!!!
my biggest gripe with DLC characters is that for 99% of games we have to spend money to lab against them
rare for honor w
Same, Free games like brawlhalla and multiversus have had free characters in training mode for years and somehow modern paid fighting games can't seem to catch on
@@youcantbeatDbecuz free to play games make money off of ppl buying cosmetic if ppl in the fgc spent as much money on that as ppl who play those types of games they might but then again I'd also rather pay for dlc then have 2 play arcade mode 20 times to u lock a character or buy the whole game over again for 4 more characters
@@lizabeth529FACTS
Not „can’t“ . They simply decide not to, so you spend money, if you want to lab. :)
Blazblue was so notorious for broken DLC characters a running gag from the game's inception throughout its entire release history was "800Y Tier"
I guess Jubei is an exception, he is pretty bad
@metalllich3493 Terumi also was a bad DLC character, that was a huge exception for 800¥ tier joke, he's like complete opposite of that
I swear, there was a skit or something where the price of love is 800 yen or something along those lines.
I was waiting for Kokonoe to be brought up this entire video.
I remember starting Central Fiction and Ragna basically telling the player that Nine is just too much. “God your moves are as broken as ever” or something along those lines.
Happy Chaos showing up and wrecking the meta is very in-character for him to do.
Lore accurate
@@karmiccrotal3480if it was lore accurate he would have deceptive asf animations (or just give him his damn minions from the story mode)
@bungerthatoneguy AND he would just mess around continuously just letting his minions distract them before appearing behind then just saying boo then shooting them in there face with his gun
RAAAAH ANNIE MENTIONED 🗣🗣 WTF IS A REASONABLE FIREBALL 🗣🗣WTF ARE REASONABLE OTG MECHANICS 🗣🗣WTF IS A REASONABLE GROUND THROW RANGE 🗣🗣
Annie is my goat fr
Annie getting all those things is fine... *if* they were locked behind her install!
To be somewhat fair, Annie is in Skullgirls. Ms. Fortune headless corner pressure can get up to full seconds of blockstun, Beowulf can one-shot people and is tournament viable, giving Annie all the greatest shoto hits on crack is totally understandable as a design choice
She's Skullgirls' version of Vergil 😌
@@notimeforcreativenamesjust3034 And somehow, at the end of the day, way, WAY more honest of a character than Vergil. Yes, even release Annie. I know I’m a crackhead complaining about somebody smoking meth here, but what the hell is going on in MVC
Team $15 from KoF 13 is another good example
I didn’t think about it for a minute but then my mind went “Oh no I forgot about team $15!”
literally was mad they werent in the thumbnail as they completely changed the competetive and non competetive kof 13 scenes
Not many balance changes back then either so, they are still top to this day. I hated Mr. Karate the most though!
To this day I dont know what is worse, the fact that they were $15, or the fact that since there were barely any balance patches back then, they are still the reigning champs of the game
Man that was a fucking year😂😂
Some additional perspective on Leroy:
Tekken moves generally follow rules and trade-offs to ensure the majority of moves are "fair", e.g. fast low attacks are also - on hit, or safe homing mids have slow start up. Part of what makes characters distinct is that they will have a few defining tools that are intentionally "unfair", e.g. Kazumi's B2 was a fast, safe, mid homing move. Leroy's intended character defining tools were his amazing set of defensive options, consisting of his 1,1 jab string, his fast, safe, mid B1+2 counter hit launcher and a special class of Parry that was able to beat typically unparryable moves.
The issue is Leroy also had everyone else's signature moves, his orbital was faster and safer than Bryan's, his FF3 was a homing EWGF, his D1+2 was a better pressure tool than most pressure characters had access too, and to top it all off he was blessed with some of the best pokes, including an amazing DF1, the go to mid poke for the majority of the cast.
Chances were that whatever character you wanted to play had their best moves matched or outclassed by Leroy, and even if those moves held up he definitely outclassed them as a whole by virtue of having everyone else's best moves. He was in the same vein as Luke, being a master of all trades, only really being contested by Akuma and to a lesser extent Geese, who sported unique mechanics that allowed them to circumvent or dominate traditional Tekken neutral in ways no other characters could.
Great writeup, I've played Tekken 7 casually and I learned a lot.
He is not that much of a hassle
@@starward0997 well no shit, he was nerfed
nice summary, and it still doesn't cover all the busted stuff he had. the original cane was also totally absurd and his lows did unconscionable damage. it was just an absolute travesty of a character, and something they clearly did on purpose. overall, a baldly scummy move on their part.
I love how you used so much Persona 3 music for Luke. Thanks, Aleks Le.
I'm glad someone notices these things
Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed
@@zai205i notice that too
Notice
I was thinking about it just when I read that comment.
"Brought a gun to a fistfight"
Dustloop wiki quip about the HC-Sol Matchup
They forgot to mention that the fist hits harder then the gun.
The biggest reason why happy chaos was meta defining isn't his gun pressure or roll mixups, they're still around and keep him good, it was the the ability to loop steady aim into reload with a small gap. As soon as he got a knockdown or even after a successful burst, he could just hit you with steady aim over and over from full screen, always reloading the bullet he just fired, and once he ran out of concentration after ~6 steady aim shots, he'd use his concentration super to do it all over again. Each shot did fat chip damage and guard crush so you had to use all your meter to fd, you could do micro walks/runs forward into fd between shots but from full screen hed get at least 5-6 shots and on characters like goldlewis and Ino, they could barely move. You weren't allowed to jump (and ino couldn't dash) bc air blocking the shots sent you flying back, and if you got hit bc he changed up the timing or you just held back a little too late, he could often combo you into a wall stick, concentrate, break the wall with super to get his bullets back, curse to gain distance and creat instant lock-on, and use positive bonus to loop it all over again with 2-3 concentration supers using the boosted meter build for 15-20 seconds of lockdown. And even if you got in, he could suddenly break the loop to run his mixup (remember its a guard crush so he got free throw mix as well, and he still has full bullets) and if he got you, you're getting comboed into wall slump into corner pressure or wall break back into the steady aim loops. While he still can technically do the loops, the loss of guard crush and the higher concentration cost when he fires at a distance made it much much weaker, and the final concentration nerf was just to help weaken him as a whole bc he was still overtuned altho not as stupid ridiculous as he was with steady aim loops.
Tl;dr The fact that anytime he got a hit or even successfully burst he got to put you into a game of full screen red-light, green-light with little risk to himself and full resources back if you messed up is what made him so insanely meta defining.
yeah that red light green light was HELL pre-patch especially. I will forever remember the convention tourney I entered during my Testament era (mained Nago before Testament released & currently maining Asuka because I like my Phoenix Wright on crack) where I was just locked out of doing ANY of my setups because I was spending 90% of the game blocking his gun.
No one ever noticed that lukes triggers were just drive gauges, despite them saying "We wanted to tease you guys with what sf6 would be"
People very much did notice.
Didnt they quite literally say that SF5 Luke was the "future of Street Fighter", pretty sure everyone clocked that immediately.
@ubermaster1 everyone thought it was his charge specials since it reintroduced 1 frame links
As dumb as SFV Luke was, I do love how in hindsight, his VT functionality was basically a stealth preview of 6's drive gauge. Can't say I've ever seen fighting game mechanic based foreshadowing too often.
Fantastic video!
The best thing about Luke in the last season (after the very very very slight nerf) was rooting against him, no matter who was playing him, in big tournaments.
Don't you mean Sean
@@TheCJRhodes nope the best thing about Luke is having crowds all cheering "MEMPHIS"
during his super. everyone loves luke these days especially since he's nowhere near as oppressive as he was during season one
@@joedatius hah, yeah, the memes and Aleks Lee pull a lot of weight. Was talking about SFV in this context.
I think the reason why dlc characters are strong is cause by the time they come out the developers have a better understanding what makes a character work in the game they are in thanks to players pointing out who’s strong and who’s weak
Also how developers typically try new or different mechanics that can’t always be tested and balanced well before the public gets access to it. At least in this video, Luke essentially gets an sf6 drive gauge version of a v-trigger, which gives him a distinct mechanical advantage over the rest of the roster. Smash and Tekken 7’s guest characters are probably the biggest examples due to trying to get another game character’s mechanics in a game they aren’t exactly built for.
@@erurice1797 I mean... Ultimate barely tried to balance its guests characters
And use that to sell a character
@@elmaionesosexothe first fighter pass was surprisingly balanced (by Smash standards) all things considered
@@-AirKat- hard disagree, Joker still to this day is really powerful, same for Terry
about movelist in tekken it's just simple we don't
we learn the important moves and we forget the rest
you try out everyone move but keep to your 3/4 bb combos
as a King main as of 8 (my 7 main was Akuma & 7 was my first Tekken), yeah I just went to memorizing like 2 or 3 of the grabs.
It's also the fact that a large chunk of the move list is made up of strings. Like a df1, df1,2 and df1,1 will all be listed separately. Generally you'll have a move for every directional input and every button. Add a few strings on top of that and that's all your moves. Granted, you have outliers like stance characters and King with his fifty chain grabs.
to explain leeroy in his peak. Imagine the strongest moves in the game the give them all to a single character, that was prime leeroy
He was quite literally a playable SNK boss that was designed with subtly instead of the usual 'utterly and clearly broken moves/mechanics'. He was just better, at everything, than everyone else.
there's that one evo parody video where "this video speeds up every time bardock does a level 3"
Bardock lowkey killed my love for DBFZ.
There was no reason to NOT use him. He wasn't the most busted character ever released, but he was so good at everything that he could easily slot in anywhere.
His assist was great, he could spend meter like a fat kid eats cake, his damage was good to great, and he was EVERYWHERE for like a year.
Him and Cell won so many early tournaments that it just became repetitive.
Hes been trash for like 3 years now 😭
@@AshuraGC Hasn't Bardock still been a very solid character since his top tier days? Like, maybe not the best, but absolutely one of the stronger characters?
@@LloydTheZephyrianno. Like stated in the video, he just kept on going lower and lower and eventually settled near the bottom of the tier list. He doesn’t really have anything over most characters and what he used to have is almost universal or non existent in the game. For one, lot of moves were changed or first implemented (in newer characters) to work like his lariat, which is something I noticed before I stopped playing the game.
@@LloydTheZephyrianyou can look at the original comment and quite literally flip it completely. There’s 0 reason to use bardock at this point. He’s not bad by any means, but there’s a handful of characters that do everything he does but better. Take blue vegito as an example.
Then he got replaced by all of the fusions and Lab Coat 21.
Not to mention smash when dlc has been a menace since ssb4 with bayo and cloud and following it up with Steve and kazuya
at least we’ve learned how to play against both of those characters, Kazuya especially. My character actually wins those matchups easily.
Not to point the accusation your way Happy Chaos's "weak defense" is one of the biggest downplays of all time lol. No DP but the reward for mashing was a corner to corner wallbreak.
Played Chaos today. It feels like he still can do that, but my opponent was too bad for that
The term you're looking for is "Abare" (the flexibillity/options to mash as a panic reaction and the reward. It's a complicated explanation).
He’s not lying about weak defense per se, his defense is the weakest in the game post-knockdown due to having no invincible options even with meter. It’s more the conversion game you’re talking about because his conversions were and are still fucked up
HCs defense is awful. He only has access to the universal options. Granted if he gets a burst off you have to get in on him again. He is stuck with a 5 frame and I don’t think his 2K is a 4 frame low profile.
Character is still fucked up though.
@@leboiofbois1005 I think discounting the burst is a mistake, he was better than any other character at using it since it went straight into his win con. My main protest is just the risk/reward on his abare though. I don't think his defense is as good as the characters with real DP's but I do think it was way better than other characters with bad defense. Before he got hit new move getting 5P'd by Potemkin you were probably still in an advantageous position.
I do notice a pattern of final DLC characters usually being broken. Because they no longer need to worry about ruining the rep for future sales.
Like Bayonetta in Smash 4; and Android 21 in Fighterz; Luke in SF5 which I didn't know, but hey.
I don't think the devs entirely mean to drop busted ass final DLC characters. They intend for someone strong and then because it's the final DLC they stop developing on it. Which means no balance changes that would normally tap their ass down.
Here's a more obscure one for your list: Them's Fighting Herds' final DLC character, Baihe. She was literally broken. And I don't mean that as hyperbole, they rushed the patch out the door as the developers were being shut down, and needed to fill obligation of people who bought her as part of a season pass. She could spend a majority of the match literally invulnerable, and had moves that would crash the game if you comboed them. They did release one final patch to try to fix her, but I'm not sure how well it did. There's a video by PocoQuinn that describes just how broken she was on release, that just gets worse, and worse, and worse as it goes.
Haha I was actually thinking of covering Them's Fighting Herds final characters. Perhaps I'll touch on them if I ever make a follow up to this video
I’d be lying if I said this channel isn’t what got me interested in other FGs besides sf6 and GGST these are always great to watch
I remember when Makoto and Kokonoe were first released in BlazBlue, they were absurdly broken.
The definitions for the fighting game terminology in this video was really helpful to hear. Thanks for the rad vid bro :D
Aah thanks for talking about KI! Great summary on Rash (and great vid overall).
The meme of him being really easy with no drawback will probably follow him forever. If Omito played KI, he would easily grant Rash the Artumeto Gorilla title.
You hinted at it in the video, but to expand on what made wrecking ball so oppressive was that it could armor pretty much everything, put you in really bad disadvantage if it hit, and was much safer than it is now.
His tongue was/is a really obnoxious movement and pressure tool, which gave him mixup potential and resets that other characters had to work harder for (Wulf) or had their kits completely balanced around (Shago).
His main flaws were that his pressure was not completely gapless, so characters like RAAM could eat him for breakfast if he overextended and not having meter for SBBB really hurt his disadvantage.
People will probably always hate Rash, but picking someone up, going crazy on the stick and throwing them will never not be funny.
Happy Chaos at his prime killed all my interest in Guilty Gear
For real. Such an interesting design for a character, needing to balance two resources to get access to his best tools, only for him to be really good without them and absolutely busted with them.
He was just lore accurate lol
@@jays.6843i wouldn’t say hc is “really good” with no resources, he has good normals but that’s about it
I might me talking out of my rear but I think the reason Happy Chaos took so long to nerf was because Arcsys didn't just want to nerf the character, they also wanted to buff him in ways that reinforced the playstyle they had in mind for the character, which I believe is the spot he is in now
Aint no way
Yumi and Adachi from BBTAG definitely belong in this conversation. That whole game is a tragic tale of what-might-have-beens.
But Adachi deserves it
I wished he covered Adachi, I'm very curious about what this character did
Yumi's power is stored in the b00bs hitting 8K-10K combos THAT easily
@@rimzaaah5892it comes down to team synergies mostly. On his own he lacked mix, strong anti-air, and has both the pros and cons of being a persona character (reduced effectiveness of push block from opponent i exchange for the risk of getting melted by "Persona Break" which is to say you getting hit with extra damage if your persona moves whiff and they hut the persona. What made him strong can be summed up really quickly though: Maziodyne and Assists. At pretty much any range if you were hit with Maziodyne it was a full conversion and if he got that hit, you were going to NEED to exoend the meter for a break or you were going to watch your character get looped for iirc around 7k very easily. He was never the most broken character imo but he was hated because he was very "Pick up and play" and paired obnoxiously well with other pick up characters like Yu Narukami and Hyde. This meant someone could very easily pick up the game, go (especially common) Yu and Adachi and just melt you with autocombos and basic specials usage. Yumi is much more of a problematic example as well as characters like Akatsuki and BB Naoto.
That was a real tragedy.
Quick correction on Kuon in UNI2, he's not a bonus fighter you get for buying the game's season pass. You can unlock Kuon and his theme by completing Arcade Mode with specific characters. Buying the season pass did unlock him instantly though. Only reason I know this for sure is because the launch version on Switch didn't get me his awesome theme. So I had to do all the Arcade Modes just to get the theme anyways lol
Hell ya Big Yellow is sick go check them out after this video
This video definitely deserves a part 2. There are so many examples. A few Smash characters come to mind, even though I know so many people don't consider Smash a "serious" fighting game.
I don't care what anyone says, most cases of OP DLC characters are just misguided attempts at making characters that suit the meta, yes, but Bandai Namco does this shit on purpose. It is not a shock that 3 of their biggest fighting games (Tekken, Fighterz, Smash Bros., it counts for this topic) all have downright predatory DLC characters that are easy, overpowered, and basically mandatory to play or even just learn to play against at all. The pinnacle of this is Tekken 7 selling frame data as DLC. That is blatant pay-to-win bullshit, and Bamco knows this.
Hell, all the way back in Street Fighter x Tekken, they were the pioneers of scummy DLC, with on-disc DLC. We see how Capcom does DLC, and we see how Bamco does DLC, it's very obvious who wanted to squeeze every last dime out of their loyal fans for minimal effort.
My favorite instance of a new character dropping being absolutely broken is when Mauga dropped on OW2. He was insanely busted and overtuned at the time he came out, which caused a lot of competitive players to just use only him in higher ranked play. All the other tank's viability got lowered severely just from how strong Mauga was.
There was one caveat to that though and it was the fact that Mauga could only be played early if you bought the OW2 battle pass. If you didnt, you would have to grind up to lvl 40 on the battle pass to unlock him for free. For half of that initial season Mauga dropped, it was very much p2w and my favorite story to come out of it was there had been a guy who initially didnt care about Mauga or the battle pass, but knew of the threat the character was. Mid comp match, he got so tired of playing against the enemy teams Mauga, he told his team he'd be back and BOUGHT THE BATTLE PASS TO PLAY MAUGA EARLY SINCE HE HADNT HIT LVL 40 YET. the best part about it too was he knew nothing about the character and somehow still won the entire game after his $10 purchase.
to this day i can't get over how aggressively "early 2010s newgrounds porn flash game" skullgirls's artstyle is
Funny you say that, because one of the animators working on the game (Zone) is *literally* an early 2010s Newgrounds NSFW artist, in fact the reason she got hired was because everyone on the team was very impressed by a Skullgirls _porn parody_ she made!
Speaking as a big SG fan, you are totally right lol
@@EmmariscobarI always through she was too good not to be a professional animator looks like the team thought the same lmao
As someone who was on newgrounds prior to that and is a dedicated Sg player, this thought never crossed my mind, have you considered that you may be a cumbrained beater?
@@Emmariscobar Zone is a woman? This never came up.
Mr Mix talking about skullgirls balance???? Oh hell yes
Extremely hyped to reach that part of the video, really need better opinions than “if everybody’s busted nobody is”
This channel went from talking about SRB2 (the only Sonic game I like) to talking about fighting games (my favorite genre of game). This channel was made for me. Keep up the good work Based God.
best part about bardock was that his auto combo had a relatively unique anti-float where it would let you challenge air approaches like superdash with jab. At the time this was pretty unheard of as most autocombos would lead to people being floated out of combos if you jabbed superdash
I didn't play BlazBlue during that age but I remember people saying Kokonoe was beyond busted when she debuted. Also a lot of DLCs in BBTAG (Yumi, Tank, Adachi) were hella strong buuut that might be obvious since there was a lot of dlc in that game haha.
Launch Leroy was ridiculous. LITERALLY every move he did was OP. It was crazy. I’ll never forget.
That’s where Kami’s infamous “BARKDOK B” line came from 😂
Just found you and binged your videos last night before bed, and I get a brand new video when I wake up? So unbelievably zased. Keep doing what you’re doing man, love the content
ik how the meta shouldn't justify the concept of "fun" for just a few players, but boy, i had SO MUCH fun with bardock.
being the small latino lad i was, e grew up with A LOT of dragon ball, but bardock's movie was special for me. not only because i had a strong connection with it at first, but because it was my first bootleg dvd. it was MINE, different from all the stuff there was at the house i was raised with many cousins.
we weren't starving poor, but having a dvd player at the time for my family was very much just a luxury and non-essential.
as i grew older and i could watch dragon ball in my mother's first computer, downloading it from piracy sites, i finally watched the whole thing and bardock was still my favorite character.
i got dbfz close to the launch, and enjoyed all the no. 16, cell and black goku meta, buuut bardock dlc was heaven for me.
i just had SO MUCH fun playing the best character, and watching pros picking him all the time.
i know nostalgia talks a lot for me abt this time of the game, but as an introvert child in a poor family, with a few friends, that bootleg dvd was one of the few things i could call mine and go back to "whenever i wanted" (more like "whenever i could", but hey, what did i know, right?).
i was so glad i could see bardock all the time in dbfz. it was like when i was young and i would play that movie on repeat whenever nobody was using the tv and the dvd player.
And yet no mention of smash 4 bayo or ultimate’s Steve 😭 RIP
Both were in my notes when I began working on the video but I couldn't find a good way to capture footage of either Smash 4 or Smash Ultimate unfortunately
Fr, this is becoming a Smash tradition at this point.
Mixtape talks more about traditional fighters than platform fighters anyway.
I mean I couldn’t tell you why they were strong, I just know generally they were OP
@@Guitar-Dog Bayo needed one touch to win in a game where 2 stock was standard. Steve invalidates a lot of the cast and does everything. This pails on comparison to ssbb meta knight however lmao.
Okay I think the video is great but I do have some feedback for the Happy Chaos section (for context Ive played Strive since S1 and hung around the comp scene until fairly recently, played in tons of tournaments and am very confident in my knowledge for this game):
21:21 Okay so here I have a small nitpick with the idea that Goldlewis was bad, because he really wasnt. The Goldlewis playerbase just gaslight people into thinking he sucks, but he was a pretty solid mid tier at the time. He just sucked to play because he is the epitome of "Cant Get In, will Kill you if he does" so he felt like he couldnt do shit until he got into his best range, but once he did you had to deal with really obnoxious approach options like 9jD, which is near impossible to anti-air on reaction and is very disjointed for an air button, and him just swinging his super disjointed coffin that did extreme numbers on you with chip damage. Couple that with old FD that made the opponents moves more plus, you can see how stupid this made Golds typhoon pressure. That said FD was changed around the same time HC released so Goldlewis had it worse then, especially with how the meta with HC was shaped.
22:18 Correction, both of these stances were absolutely broken, Steady Aim was the one used more in S1 for the "zoning" HC style that Deb/Romolla (who showed the world Guard Crush loops with HC for the first time) and Umisho popularized, while At The Ready was used for the "mixup" HC style that players like Tigerpop made infamous. What ultimately makes present day At The Ready the more "broken" stance is the fact that HCs buffs and nerfs made him lean towards "mixup" style more than "zoning" each and every patch.
22:58 AtR stances reticle will actually have a slight delay before locking on making it possible to backdash or move out of the way of the reticle before the gunshot connects, note this is not possible with Curse applied as Curse will automatically make the reticle lock on much faster. This is why jumping over curse is so important, as with curse HC can transition from "zoning" to offense with you being almost unable to do anything about it if he is close enough. Also as a sidenote, the starting reticle position is completely random, but it can end up being on your opponent, and if HC is in stance and whiffs a button, he can whiff cancel into gunshot and it has a roughly 1/3 chance to hit. This is referred to as "whiff gunshot" and is commonly cited as being something everyone playing the game (including a fair few HC players) want removed or reworked.
24:34 Roll used to be much easier to block back in S1, I cant remember of the top of my head what specifically changed but if I recall right you could FD to either make roll easier to see and block on crossup or just not crossup entirely. This got changed with HC rebalancing in S2, where to sum it up they nerfed his broken "zoning" and made his offense stronger and more rewarding.
24:48 Just a slight correction, while clone could be used defensively it was mostly used offensively after knockdown to lock people in place, but you could also use it in neutral as a wall since while HC could pass through it you couldnt. But Scapegoat oki is some of the most degenerate okizeme Ive had to hold, Im surprised it took this long for people to figure out how broken it was, as dealing with it required a hit into a cancel or a RC, otherwise HC could delay his button on your wakeup to hit on the same frame that he would throw you, being protected from abare (and if spaced correctly wakeup throw) thanks to Scapegoat eating one hit for HC, but I think this was rarely if ever used to the full extent of its power, though you might find a Tigerpop clip that uses this exact strategy at some point in his matches, as when he played HC (and still playing ABA) he liked to go for unconventional but strong okizeme that he very often found himself.
25:42 Here, just a note that HCs gauge will also drain more the farther and less the closer you are. This was one of his changes in S2 that made him more viable as a mixup character instead of a zoner. Minute detail but probably good to mention.
27:02 Note that HC is definitely not worthless without his resources, but he is a lot worse without them. But compared to a character like Asuka who literally cannot use his special moves outside of Mana Refill and Overdrives if he runs out of mana and takes extra damage, HC is a lot more of a threat even without concentration or bullets, especially because he can recover from these states very well with Tension (namely if he cancels button into concentration super he is very plus). He is still not a very good character without it however, so if thats what you wanted to communicate then I think you succeeded, but I think "worthless" is a tad bit too strong.
Overall though, for (I assume) not having Strive as your main game, you did very well and I think the HC section is very good. Take my feedback as mostly nitpicks and addendums to stuff youve already said, that would probably require its own video if made into a script.
With that said, much love from Czechia, I absolutely love your videos, please keep up the good work. Im praying for your channel to grow even more than ever, you deserve 100k subs already imo.
Edit: wrote anti-air instead of air button in the Goldlewis section plus some grammatical errors so I fixed it.
I just woke up and there's a new MrMixtape video? This is gonna be a great day!
Great video! Tanya from MKX would've also been a notable mention. There were so many Tanyas in top 8 of CEO 2015 just after she was released. But I guess this channel is not that focused on NRS games.
Anyway, amazing content.
I'd definitely love to see the opposite video too
DLC characters that just... didn't leave an impact at all
In the Smash Bros games, there was Roy in Sm4sh and Piranha Plant in Ultimate.
@@jennyinutil2018 Eleven moment
Labcoat 21 from db will always be the biggest mistake of a character I’ll see. I find it hard to imagine someone could put out a more disgusting character.
Smash 4 Bayonetta was a menace. She dominated tournaments. She practically escorted characters to the blast zone. It came to a head when Smash Ultimate was showed off.
There was a demonstration between pros and everyone had a choice between the previous characters and a couple new characters. The details are a bit foggy, but someone played Bayonetta against Ridley. It was meant to basically show off how cool the new characters were, and I'm sure you can see where this went. Ridley got _destroyed_ by Bayonetta. It was basically a message from the community about how broken she was. When Ultimate came out, she was massively nerfed.
Kazuya and Steve _wish_ they were as big a destructive force as Smash 4 Bayonetta.
The fact that you let the audience figure out on their own that Rash's rainbow skin is in fact a reference to that one frog meme (I alsmost said Dat Boi but then used my brain) is a very good show of your character
As a DMC fan I CANNOT unsee the Helm Breaker 29:44, the mini spiral swords 31:30 and the literal fucking stinger 31:22...
Well she does have a have a dante color
The game is inspired by mvc afterall, so some Dante and Vergil moves were def used for her (also Dante magical girl and bunny Vergil, peak peak PEAAAK)
Wait, are you the guy at all the JMCroft tournaments?!?!
Omg, I had no idea you made your own videos! These are awesome!
My character arc is slowly learning what oki-zeme is by watching all your videos
Okizeme just means applying offense to a character who's waking up on the ground. Knockdowns are always strong due to how much they limit the opponent's options so they're a good opportunity to take your turn and get your pressure going.
@@Skallva Honestly I'm surprised I spelt it correctly the first time.
Big yellow mentioned!! i loved their Abigail vid ❤
Just to clarify, the reason leroy was so good wasn't necessarily his damage, it was that every move he had was better than any other version of that move, and he had all of them. Orbital was good because it was 2 frames safer and faster than the bryans, his b1+2 was good because it was i12 so essentially a magic 4 but mid. He also had a ch confirmable string from a jab that wallsplatted and did like 40 damage which was safe at the time. I think the move that most players actually find the most problematic was his d1+2 because it basically did everything. Good on hit, neutral on block, hit from range 3, had good tracking, fast, ch launched.
"Neither you, nor I bought this game to block"
Bruh, I don't even own the game and I feel called out!
Hey man love the vids! Thanks to you I got motivated to try out sf6 and I’m loving it so far
Dropping a sub NOT because of how well made this video is. Its very well made and incredibly interesting, dont get me wrong, but anyone who uses MMZ4's ost in a video is automatically goated in my book,
I was waiting for Bayonetta and Steve but guess you're not a smash player. Just know they would have fit right in!
Great video! Was a fun watch.
Don't forget that in S2 of Strive, we had the wall stick meta. A lot of Strive was designed around the fact that it you do enough damage to your opponent, you fly through the wall and go back to neutral. Except, Happy Chaos just said no. On top of his crazy mix he could hit you in such a way that you'd stick to the wall, he'd regenerate resources, and then rather than flying across the screen off the wall or through the wall to neutral like normal, you'd fall down in front of him, stuck in the corner for another round of mix. He could do this as long as he wanted, until he had full meter for HKD and mix post wall break, or could even get Positive Bonus in some extreme cases, all of which would allow him to loop back into situation when very very few others reliably could, especially off such ridiculous buttons like 5P or a blocked 5D. He was nuts.
So much persona music!! Love it!
Perhaps a hint that you're covering P4A soon?
LordKnight made a very insightful observation about DBFZ's later developments, in that ArcSys basically turned everyone's normals into Bardock's lariat. That on top of the nerfs not only made Bardock's lariat not as appealing, but the fact that normals can gatling into more attacks and be special canceled to extend pressure meant that the lariat was now just a worse version than what pretty much everyone had in their kits.
Another aspect of happy chaos which I think makes him so good is his mobility. The fact that he can use the roll out of steady aim makes him so slippery, as well as opening new combo routes with the distance it covers. I love it!
All my Happy Chaos family stand up! We arent goin anywhere!
About the comments on Umisho; following the recent changes to the DP mechanics she has picked back up Happy Chaos on top of her Sol. Even before that she kept him as a secondary, though.
Something really worth mentioning with Happy Chaos, going purely off memory, is that when played right he basically had no actual resource management.
I don't 100% remember how it worked or the names of moves, but he has a ball projectile he could throw. This ball caused a debuff that either restored some of his Focus bar when shooting or made it cost less to shoot? I forget exactly which. The point is that it made the Focus bar way easier to manage. Also it APPLEID ON BLOCK. In other words, assuming I remember how it works correctly, a bouncing full screen projectile would essentially negate a massive chunk of the resource management.
As for the bullets, like said in the video he was good at building bar so he could use Deus Ex just for the reload if needed. But more importantly, I don't know the exact frame data but he had a loop that was basically 214 > shoot > reload > repeat - Paired with the ball in the previous part, he rarely ever had to actually manage resources.
That's all not even considering how the chip damage while small does build up and the fact that with the pushback and such, it meant that if put at full screen the opponent would have to advance and guard like a dozen times before being able to play again. If they got hit 1 time by guarding a little late it'd be like 20% and more distance.
We're all going down to Memphys!
Been enjoying your videos, finally subscribed
It's something I appreciate about BB:CF. Characters like Es that came as later content sure are very strong - but not broken. If anything, Es in particular specifically ended up fitting real snugly into high A or maybe S tier, so to say, and ended up being a fantastic beginner-friendly character to give newbies a taste of "the top tier life" while also offering plenty to learn for true mastery. And current BB:CF just includes all DLC anyway, too.
EPIC WIN mention
HELL YEAH BABY
Hi I can explain Leroy, the thing that made leroy as a guranteed SSS teir is that his tools had the best properties of its archetype like his DF1 being the best poke with follow ups like season 1 kazmi, Orbital is so evasive has range and safe like bryan, a hellsweep with okii like Kazuya and having tools that break the rules of tekken as his b1+2 being a 12 frame ch lunching mid those type of moves are either 11 frame highs or a 13-15 frame mid having a 12 frame safe mid ch luncher and his one time use staff with his generic tools was a bit too much, his damage was overtuned doing akuma level damage with guranteed follow ups after a wall combo, his whiff punishement was almost fullscreen with a follow up and his parry made pressuring him a challenge.
Leffen getting carried to one of the most anti-climactic EVO wins of all time on Happy Chaos' back is still one of my favorite images in recent fighting game history, the picture of the crowd where everybody is just stone-faced is so funny.
it made me so fucking happy checking the bracket for EVO 2024 (was watching the top 6s), seeing he was in the loser side, pulling up the top 24 stream & seeing *my own main knock his ass out of bracket right before the top 6*
The year bardock won evo someone took the WHOLE top. 24 sped it up by .25x every time he used a level 3. Took a 4 hour stream down to 7 minutes
super happy you’re talking about strive more :) chaos was BROKEN lmfao
I like how much the last character on the list stands out in terms of what the devs likely intended.
Bardock is everyone's favorite edgy badass. Leroy, too, is presented as a badass in the lore, and even Tekken 8's story has him beat up Jin. Luke was supposed to set the new standard for the Street Fighter series as the representative of the next game. Happy Chaos is essentially the ultimate antagonist in the Guilty Gear story, having played a part in most bad things that have happened to the cast. Even Annie was a creator's pet of the Skullgirls devs, who they very likely wanted to implement as far back as when Beowulf was new, what with her involvement in his story.
In comparison, Rash is *_really_* a goober. He's a weird retro character, like Mr. Game and Watch or R.O.B. in Smash. He doesn't fit in the setting of Killer Instinct nearly as well as Arbiter or General RAAM. He's goofy and out-of-place, but that goofiness also kicks everyone's asses. I think if the devs do typically make DLC characters overpowered on purpose, Rash is the least intentional case.
It's crazy how for a month in S3 people thought HC was high tier only for people to realize clone is broken and then go right back top tier now he got buffed in the recent patch
Nice stuff. I'm surprised smash bros 4 dlc wasn't here with cloud and Bayonetta.
Love your content man. Would love to see you make more in depths stuff into dbfz
i mean they definitely usually try to make dlc characters strong. i dont think cases like these were planned to take over the meta, but they know no one is gonna spend 7 bucks on a trash character. but its also just natural that characters that come out at the end of a game's lifespans are stronger than the beginning characters. look at pokemon, yugioh, etc, power creep is insane. league of legends is the same way.
Your videos are great however it would be nice to see 60fps videos, especially since they are centered around fighting games. Great work regardless.
Notes on the Happy Chaos section:
-Both of his stances were (and are) extremely powerful, but most GG players I know would tell you Steady Aim was actually scarier. In that stance, Happy Chaos could (and can!) cancel the recovery of exiting the stance into Focus or Reload. If you didn't predict that he'd go for Focus and immediately run at him, he could go right back to pressuring you from fullscreen. And he'd plus after one bullet reload, so you don't want to challenge that. Not until he starts reloading the full clip to punish your passiveness, anyway. This whole time, you also have to watch out for him just running up and starting pressure.
-A key part of his dominance that you missed was his safety to burst. A lot of characters could occasionally enforce burst safe mixups or combos, but most could do this very rarely, and some couldn't do it at all. Happy Chaos, on the other hand, was almost always safe to burst during his combos AND his afforementioned fullscreen pressure. And this is what made Deus Ex Machina a busted super. It didn't actually matter that the move has a hard knockdown, because the only time this move was used was for wallbreak. On top of hitting the opponent anywhere on screen, allowing HC to super wallbreak off of his burst safe combos (a sentence which sounds insane just saying it), DEM did great damage even at high scaling, and in the right circumstances HC could Focus before using the super, putting him in a literally perfect pressure situation immediately after wallbreak.
-Oh, and wallslump mix. I won't get into that, but it was messed up.
-Finally, people didn't start to sweat about HC losing his spot at the top until Burst changes. Yes, the concentration nerfs were big, but arguably more important were actually the universal buffs to Burst. Burst went from short range to full screen, making burst safety a thing of the past. This was basically a targeted nerf to HC.
-Also, HC really does have awful, awful defense. He's one of only two characters without a reversal super, which is horrible for him, especially since he's on the more fragile side of the cast.
Luke’s discussion using the Persona 3 Reload’s music? I see you MrMixtape
Playing Persona 3 music for Luke is smart lmao
Love seeing Killer Instinct out here.
33:09 The IPS isn't affected by the green bar. That's the undizzy (or drama bar in game terms), which was added quite a bit into the game's lifespan as the number of buttons skullgirls had still made for rather lengthy combos before the IPS kicked in.
A big characteristic for Undizzy is that it doesn't go away immediately on resets and that it's accumulated based on the light/medium/heavy moves you are executing. It's also visually distinguishable from IPS as the burst indicators are green instead of red.
I still remember seeing the anniversary patch stream for KI that had Sajam as a guest for reactions. When the balance section came around, Keits ran down Rash's changes at the end. The exchange went like this:
Keits: "Alright, the moment everyone has been waiting for, we have saved Rash for last."
Sajam: "Lemme guess, you gave him nothing but buffs, right?"
Keits: "We have a page and a half of nerfs."
IDK why persona music plays in my head whenever I watch your videos
I think you oversold lock-on of Happy Chaos's reticle, it was good in other ways. As long as you're moving, which in GG you will be, it can't lock on though there is a random chance that a shot could hit (which is frustrating in it's own right). He really needed the curse grenade to use shot in nuetral, but he can do it off every knockdown so it wasn't the biggest issue. Also the reticle would lock on much faster after an opponent blocked or got hit by an attack, so he didn't need the curse grenade for combos and blockstrings. Which synergized with his surprisingly good normals.
Also, on release most decent happy chaos players could get around the reload requirement if they had good execution since iirc you could reload in between some hits of shot combos.
This and a few other reasons (like being unable to block with the gun out) was why he was considered kinda hard to play and why whenever I encountered a HC around floor 7 or 8 it was a coin flip whether they actually knew how to play around the resources or if they knew what yo do you weren't cursed in nuetral.
Skullgirls has a couple of other really funny ones, From the first ever DLC batch Ms Fortune is arguably one of the best characters in the game still even with all the nerfs. Umbrella initially was seen as underwhelming but overtime the ridiculousness of her Ravenous State became very apparent and even after the most recent patch she still is quite devilish in Ravenous albeit in a more manageable manner, still has that Sniper Low though.
Ms Fortune is from the original roster.
Big Yellow mentioned! Love the Venn diagrams I find myself in.
I feel like I have to mention Belial in Granblue Fantasy Versus here - when he released, he was so strong with many useful tools, among which was his crouching Medium (2M). While not a low, it was so fast, took him low to the ground and had so much advantage on block that only one character could challenge the button:
Belial himself.
A couple of my personal favorites are Yumi and Adachi from BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle and the dreaded top 3 of Smash Ultimate. Yumi and Adachi both released at the same time towards the end of the game's support period, and are often referred to as the "eSports duo." Yumi has amazing neutral with good long range normals and projectiles that cause a short freeze on hit, as well as ridiculous damage output when she finds a hit, and a really strong set of assists. Adachi became the best support character in the game, sporting a beam assist the beat everything except supers, wall bounced on hit, had incredible blockstun, and was huge and hard to avoid. His other two assists weren't bad either (in BBtag you have all 3 assist, inputted by pressing neutral, forward, or back + assist,) and when he was on point he could call in his teammate, do the stronger medium version of his beam (the assist is based on the light version) which lasted longer did better damage and was larger but came out on a slight delay, and then active switch into his partner in order to completely skip neutral. Adachi isn't a slouch on point either, but his assist value alone skyrocketed him to top 5.
Smash Ultimate's incredibly hated top 3 who all come from Fighter Pass 2, consisting of Minecraft Steve, Kazuya Mishima, and Pyra/Mythra (often called Aegis or Pythra for short,) are infamous for completely shoving their way into the top spots of the meta immediately on their individual releases. Steve has some of the most oppressive and unique stage control tools in the game. Placing blocks to wall out opponents and mine for resources combined the minecart being a plus on shield burst movement tool that becomes a moving command grab that gives full combo once he jumps out of it. Combine these with his really strong and weird to deal with normals, insanely high damage output, and stupid gimmicks like blocking the ledge with blocks. Steve is a monster in the meta, often considered the best in the game. Kazuya is a lot simpler to explain, he kills you in one touch almost every time he hits you. If you master Kazuya combos they range from doing over 100% and putting the opponent in a terrible spot to just being a guaranteed kill depending on the starter and stage positioning. Combined with his strong movement due to wavedashing, Electric being an insanely fast invincible launcher that's safe on shield and nearly impossible to punish even on whiff, and gimmicks like rage drive, Kazuya is probably the most hated of the 3 because of how little you get to actually play the game against him since you die from one mistake. Aegis are interesting since they're kind of two characters who share similar normals, air normals, and smash attacks with differing frame data and power, and they can be swapped between at any time by pressing down + special. Pyra is a brick shithouse who does insane damage on individual hits and can kill VERY early, and Mythra compliments this very well by being sacrificing range and kill power for speed, mobility, and much lower base knockback giving her incredible combo capability. If you're familiar with Smash Mythra is commonly referred to as Sheik with a Sword while Pyra is called Ike with good frame data, and I think those descriptions are accurate.
"clone is a defense tool"
you'd be correct until you realize that clone restricts player movement and blocks DPs.
You're essentially allowed to do whatever you want when you have clone in the corner.
Glad you talked about Skullgirls! Love that game
If I could add a couple, Bayonetta in Smash 4 (assuming that even counts), Kat in PSAS (assuming THAT counts), and Risotto Nero (or Wonder of U, but I would argue Risotto was a bigger monster) in JJASBR are also big contenders for over centralizing meta as well.
Really nice video! While i’m really happy with Rachel, i’m still hoping for my boy Naoto!
I could talk for a million years about how overturned Annie (and later Umbrella) were, especially leading up to EVO 2022.
For Annie, one thing that wasn't mentioned was quite a few large tournaments were played on the Annie "Beta" which was essentially pre-retail release + some reworks for characters like Beowulf and Eliza.
During this pre-release, Sonic played Solo Annie and absolutely destroyed the competition due to how insanely strong she was compared to the rest of the cast. For starters, her base combo at 1.0 scaling did almost 9k damage. That's more than anyone else in the cast (except Big Band) at the time and was essentially half a life-bar of a 3 character team. Her pillar of creation super cost only 1 bar, tracked and had 2 hits, could hit full screen, and was -6 on BLOCK and +30 on hit. You could fullscreen punish any move in the game and even if the opponent blocked, they wouldn't be able to punish unless they were right next to you.
Her jHP had an even larger hitbox leading to insane 50/50 high/low left/right mixups that were unmashable and it even vorterxed off certain assists.
Her H North Knucle assist had so much blockstun that if the opponent blocked it, you could always take your turn and enforce your mixups. It was also multi hitting and comes out so fast that it trades with most other full screen assists such as H Bomber or H beam. H North Knuckle being so good and getting nerfed on release is a large part of why it took so long to realize how strong Annie DP Assist is.
Annie Install was even more + on Beta meaning you could install and so long as you had meter, you would beat and/or trade favorably with whatever your opponent did. Its also mentioned in the video but Annie install summoned stars that appeared after pressing any move, not just heavy buttons.
Its funny looking back at pre-EVO Skullgirls and seeing just how much stupid stuff we put up with just because we were excited for new characters.
Bro dokkan battle osts? You are a legend
The one DLC character I think was the most broken is Alien's Acid form in MKX. Her tail attacks covered about 2/3 of the screen and had a good anti-air across all her forms, but in acid they also sprayed acid everywhere, that turned into a puddle on the ground if you dodged the projectile, which also allowed for restand combos, especially in the corner, and added a DOT that stacked each time you got hit allowing for a lot of damage, and finally the puddles could stop you from sprinting while you were on them, so the corner was a deathtrap. Throw in a command dash that low profiled projectiles, an incredibly strong air-to-air that sprayed acid and several strong 50/50s, and she was strong at basically all distances.
Good stuff on SG but there's one character, one character that even after her rework she Remains one of the Most ridiculous High damaging characters in current day.
Canopy Kingdoms' 2nd to the thrown, The Saltiest child ever conceived, Umbrella Renoir.
Good resets
An Instant overhead(that gets Faster once her World eating Rain protector enters "ravenous")
One of the safest DHC's in SG
Stupidly good damage
And Her Overstuff rework giving her heavy armor on her 5HP.
And her having multiple ways to make characters with armor think twice before using it.
She hasn't won a lot, But Nope.avi Got pretty Close at Evo 2023(Before she got reworked)