First, let me say that I am a mid-level player, and I don't feel like my opnions will be shat on, or ruled out simply because of that. Obviously, they will be contested, and I am perfectly fine with that. But I don't feel like I'm unwelcome in this discussion. I want to thank Belial for his efforts. Even though a lot of people disagree with the way he's doing things, I think it's great that he IS doing something.
Even I disagree with the way the big poll came out. I remember when the poll started, he wanted to focus on the stupid stuff. I took that to mean the stupid good stuff, and the stupid bad stuff. So I voted in the thread accordingly. I think SCV is very close to being extremely well balanced. The outliers are a real problem, though. When EVO rolls around, I think Mitsurugi, Cervantes, and Viola will dominate in terms of character choice (and likely success, too), and we'll hardly see any of Raphael, ZWEI, and Leixia.
Productive discussion incoming.
In terms of the top characters and the bottom characters, I think the top ones are Mitsu, Viola, and Cervantes. Seriously, I would rather fight APat than any of those three. I feel like APat actually has to work for his damage, and he has actual weaknesses that I can take advantage of.
Mitsu, on the other hand, has damage fall into his lap. All of his moves are stupidly safe and stupidly damaging. He frame traps as well as Leixia and Viola! And if for any reason he ends up at disadvantage, he can use 4B to punish you for using your advantage. And not to mention the tracking. Mitsu is bullshit. Cervantes, I think is just barely good enough to be bullshit. It's the speed and the reward, mostly.
And then Viola. I know this guy, Sluch. He's a local guy. I see him almost every time I go up to Arcade Legacy, be it for fight nights, ranbats, whatever. He's a Viola player. He's been a Viola player since 1.01, and he's been a dominant force since then. I remember the first ranbats we had at Arcade Legacy this year. Grand finals, it was Sluch's Viola, in the loser's bracket, against Rekano's Maxi, in the winner's bracket. Shitty matchup, huh? Sluch reset the bracket and won. Back in 1.01, I didn't disagree with the notion of giving Viola more damage, but when 1.02 rolled around, they gave her *way too much*. She only needed a little bit so that she could capitalize on those meterless situations better, and get a little more punch for her meter. And then the 6B+K tech emerged, and she became brainless. All she would need to do is 6B+K into whatever she wants. Are there holes in this? I'm sure there are, but I don't want to look for them! If I try to find a hole and I guess wrong, I'm going to eat shitloads of damage and give her shitloads of meter. The 6B+K pressure is exacerbated by the amount of damage she now does. So those are her two big problems, I think.
As for the low characters, I'm mostly in consensus with Raphael, ZWEI, and Leixia. I don't fight against Raph and ZWEI often enough to say why they're weak, and others have expressed it better than I likely could. I agree with the sentiment of Raph's excessive linearity, and ZWEI in general just seems really easy to deal with as long as you block and be patient. But at least they both do damage.
I think damage is the one thing keeping Leixia out of mid tier. I was discussing this on my profile page with a few people. She has speed, safety, and evasion, and outranges many characters as fast as her. She's pretty versatile, yeah. So she should be pretty strong, but her dramatic damage deficiency overcompensates for her strengths, especially in a game where characters do so much damage. Viola doesn't necessarily need a great deal of damage because she has the tools to lock you in, and force you to deal with her offense. She makes chances for herself to get hits that she can convert into damage with her meter. Leixia, however, doesn't have that. She has great tools, sure. But she still has to make reads and guesses like every character in the cast that isn't named Viola. And everyone else gets far more off a good guess than she does. That problem's exacerbated by her low ability to convert hits into greater damage. Many characters' useful moves can be enhanced by BEs, or can combo into BEs. The only way Leixia can combo into BE is CH 8B+K, 2B+K, 44[A], and CH 1A, which are all more difficult to connect than everyone else's options for comboing into BE. I am fine with Leixia doing less damage than the rest of the cast; her playstyle lends well to this. But right now, the difference is too great.
I also agree that in 1.01, WS B BE was stupid. It held me back from improving for a long time because it fixed so many problems for me. It did my evasion, did my damage, and even did my taxes. But I also think it was overnerfed. I think a graceful solution to make it useful again would be to restore its immediate evasiveness, then reverse the current scaling model we have now. If you dodge a move, you get bad damage. If you hit it raw, you get good damage. That way, you don't have your cake and eat it too.
