Maybe it's just because I've run myself ragged as of late with not sleeping much as of late (I'll partially blame this hype train I'm on) but.... why don't they just give Talim wind element effects to her moves? Especially now, if she is back (which I have no confirmation of as like I've said before I only currently know 7 characters.... ok 8 now actually as of today, but more on that later) and older, more ingrained into the wind priestess life.... you would figure and hope they highlight that in a logical way that reflects her abilities increasing.
Giving her WIND! effects to her attacks because THE WIND! would help guide her in a higher tier direction finally by adding better reach and properties to her attacks. I'm not saying they have to go full Rashid or whatever. But giving her more wind element to her attacks could seriously help, be cool, and make perfect sense for her maturation and role.
Indeed, for a character that speaks so much about the wind, she doesn't do much with it in battle. Save for her Critical Finish in SC4, the only times you'll see her using any kind of power are in her endings in SC3 and in SC4 and its hella broken stuff: in SC3, she single-handedly destroys Soul Edge by calling upon the wind to do so and in SC4 she shows to be able to revive dead people, as she brings Algol's son back. Its just confusing how she doesn't use any magic in her actual fighting style, even the fan fighting style from SC3 used wind attacks.
If they don't bring Rock back, then they're obligated to bring Bangoo in this time around since he was the one canonical in-universe newcomer everyone thought would be introduced as playable on SCV due to the time skip and the potential he would have, and yet.... no Bangoo. :I
I have to say, among all the questionable decisions that V made with its roster, not having Talim, Zasalamel, and Bangoo helped make the time skip all the more baffling and pointless feeling to do when they didn't bring in the characters that would've gotten older and matured into adults (Talim and Bangoo) while Zasalamel would've been around because he's immortal and there's no reason for him to be left out of involvement in the happenings to some extent.
I'm going off on a tangent now, but you get my point. lol
I was one of the people surprised by Bangoo's absence. I mean, it was THE opportunity for them to make Rock have any sort of meaning in the story, and maybe even give Bangoo an actually good version of his moveset. Besides, Bangoo looked really badass in one of Rock's endings in previous games:
I also agree on the point you made about aging. The closest things we have to that are Patroklos, Pyrrha and Viola, but even then, we never saw Patroklos and Pyrrha before SC5 and it was never truly confirmed if Viola is actually Amy, no matter how much they are alike. It seems they held back even when aging the rest of the cast, I mean, only Mitsurugi and Siegfried aged out of all the veterans.
Ah, great. You got me all excited to know who the 8th character is.
Wait, Kilik, two veterans who have been in every numbered installment (Mitsurugi/Siegfried and Ivy), Kilik's rival, the rival's friend, the Fire Emblem thingy... those are six. Verberan didn't reveal anything about the 8th, but I'm missing the 7th too.
Leixia is literally discount Xianghua. She's so unmemorable that even Patroklos outranked her on the popularity poll. Patroklos.
Yeah, she really has no purpose at all, except showing how much Xianghua moved on after getting a son with Kilik. Like, destroying an obvious romance, that is really her only purpose, its not even like she has a very different personality or moveset, at least Patroklos has a very different moveset to his mother (in his "base form") and has a different (yet repulsive) personality.