A theoryi discussed time ago and proving to be true is that a character to be competitive needs some tools to heavily discourage random crouching/step, a powerful mid that will punish you if you try to duck without a reason or the same for step.
Raph's most powerful move comes from his stance, which would be absurdly too good if available in neutral. I'm looking back at the old 22B with fond memories. Was 62-66 damage too much on NH for no meter ? Having 66(B) be your biggest move from neutral stance is not threatening enough for opponents to respect raph enough to not risk interrupts.
I don't know if it is Project soul's intention to keep Raph in the 40-50 combo zone with safeish combo starters. If they are going to turn him into a poker and counter-attacker, i'm going to point out I feel his pokes are a bit underwhelming.
Anyways, to contribute, these are some of my personal underused moves. Again : Having all these changes will be unlikely as 1) buffing raph's underused moves doesn't necessarily give him a silver bullet to take over a match to win and 2) the sheer volume of minor buffs will cause too much grief from the other character's users.
1A being 10 damage reinforces Raph being low damage, but I don't see why they could not add some perks to it (if they are adamant on keeping it 10 damage) such as being 0 on hit or even slight tracking (not asking for X's 3A, as functionally Raph's 1A is a faster, non-tracking 1/2 damage version of that move). Look i'm going to be unpopular for saying this but : I'm willing to trade away some of 33B's damage to give it to 1A. 1A is just ridiculously underwhelming. If it is going to be just an annoyance move (stuck at 10 damage), then it should track somewhat to really tick people off.
6B+K: What is 6B+K for ? I cannot figure it out. My secret dream is to have BE versions of the canteralla needles which tracks and lead to a combo possibilities similar to 2_8B+K. Obviously that aint going to happen in a mere patch, so can anyone explain what 6B+K is for ? Does it TC or something that I don't know about ? Its a decent speed, safe, mid, guard guage crusher is what i've looked at it for (basically when you don't know what you want to do).
4A : Decent tracking, decent range, decent speed. Too bad it only does the magic "16" damage threshold that raph has on his horizontals. Unsafe and negative on both CH and NH. I think, because this move evades, it can't be safe on block. Also, it probably wouldn't lead to massive CH bonuses like 22A or 22K (move redundancy). However, there is no good reason why it can't do extra damage. I'm ok with it being -2 on both CH and NH if 4A gets more damage and/or 22A on NH is + on hit.
66K: I've sometimes thrown out 66K just because I feel like I should. 1A doesn't even connect unless they're really close to a wall (but no splat). Its not bad on block, but then again this move basically only has 1 purpose : Guarnateed ringouts on certain guard bursts and guard impacts. Maybe some moves are supposed to only have 1 purpose and this is only of them.
6A: This move tracks to raph's strong side exceptionally well but has 1 catch: Less-than-2A-range. It has a 6AB NH ability for almost 30 damage (not bad!) but unfortunately with the chance that 6A whiffs due to range (not alignment/tracking issues) you're going to get TC'd and punished. 6A on its own should recover faster, (not necessarily more block stun) though I -2 (like SC4) is too strong. Maybe -6 on block and call a day for such a short ranged move.
B+K: Auto-evade frames earlier please. I can't react to some super slow verticals I see coming. It now functions as a predictionary tool. Sure you can own Aeon's BBB string, but then again you can CH him with your CE's invulnerability frames instead. Using B+K to escape setups that track against steppers would be pretty sweet and a nice raph-specific buff.
4A+B: Either this move has earlier aGI frames , or SE A gains a few frames on block (-4 or -5?). Using this to counter AAs and 2A seems to be the most common situation so why does the aGI frames last from i8 to i17? aGI from i6 to i15 would be an awesome sweet spot considering raph's multiple even-on-hit lows. Sugar on top would be the return of 44B's animation instead of the multi-poke into 3B animation.
PrepK: I think my feelings are aligned with the rest of this subforums. Losing 10 damage and 4 frames on hit was a really odd move by project soul. However, it doesnt' really matter what happens to prepK on NH as this move functions as the mid-tracking kick that is supposed to either CH characters using TC moves or side step. Unfortunately, it's too slow against a lot of TC moves, and it also doesn't track as well as the animation suggests. I'm willing to trade the ability to CE after a CH, if it would actually track (and was a little bit more sped up). Maybe just a guaranteed 66A+B ground hit so the net damage is about 35-40. PrepK after prep4 aGI is pretty much garbage if you don't have meter, so its time to fall back on prepAB or SE B (acceptable loss imo).
PrepA+B: I don't know anyone who uses this move outside of a combo. You've got prep4 and SE if you feel the need to be evasive while usually netting you superior results (in the case of SE B you get double the damage at minimum compared to the 40 from prep A+B). If prep K doesn't track, maybe this move should.
- You call overall nerfs to a low-mid tier character not injustice? You must be malfested as well!
