So, after being complimented on my Hakumen plenty of times I get cocky and start talking. Though while I'm able to use his strengths to reasonable effect, his weaknesses are a real obstruction in many situations. Since I heard there might be a possible rebalancing after SBO, I figure I should post up my suggestions.
What I found to be good with Hakumen:
+ Good&instantaneous mixup using Kishuu->throw together with Kishuu Emna.
+ Good damage which allows him to comeback from nearly anything done to him.
+ Airdash, covers a lot of ground.
What I found to be bad with Hakumen:
- Air attacks are throwable despite being out completely, I mean: the opponent would've been hit but because he was mashing throw at the end of your blade or kick he gets it.
- Air attacks do not defend Hakumen in air to air combat, Hakumen can only attack land most of the time, unless he sacrifices two stars, where he still misses the opponent 9 out of 10 times.
- Ground dashes are totally useless. Even to evade throws dashes don't work, because opponents can attempt to throw again before Hakumen lands(and avoid getting throw reject missed).
- And as a result, requires stars to dash forward.
- Has a gaping hole at his feet when trying to attack, kishuu can be stopped by mashing crouching attacks and 6B doesn't advance Hakumen the slightest(other than it being punishable at -9 still requiring that mashable kishuu)
- 5B whiffs 99% of the time because of it's weird hitbox, think about this sensibly, why would anyone launch an attack when it's duckable and 99.99% will crouchguard by default?
- 5B as a punisher tends to fail when opponent has crouch animation, if Arakune lands, Hakumen can't hit him at all unless he's using 6A, 2B or 2C.
- Outside combos guren is useless, it doesn't go through anything, it's throwable during active frames, again at the attacking point of Hakumen's body, and it leaves the opponent in advantage.
- Ability to kill projectiles becomes totally useless if Hakumen can't cancel the attack while his opponent tries to attack him.
- At lower star count Hakumen has to take a LOT of risk to get his game started. To attack at his safest Hakumen would need 4(!) stars namely: 2A-A 214B(1)623A and then go for mixup. The only normal way for Hakumen to protect his command dash is to use 5C or 5B, neither of them are foolproof. His regular dash is too much of a giveaway since Enma isn't a threat at that point and hotaru is 6B able(together with the dash itself!)
- Lack of plausible overheads till he gets 3 stars.
- Unable to defend directly above him, opponents just have to jump foward at the right timing and they're in Hakumen's blind spot. 6A is too delicate to time at that point and 2C is nearly impossible to land when they attack downwards because 1. 2C takes ages to come out at that point 2. the part of 2C that would have to hit is the hilt which is the lowest attack point from the sword.
Proposed rebalancing:
* Make attacking regions throw invincible(limbs, sword(!)).
* Either make 5B hit them at around the hip so opponents can be hit while crouching or add an attack 3B which does that.
* Make his foward dash feet attack property invincible(making it a true hop)
* Either make his backdash faster or invincible. I don't think it's necessary to do both, but one of them needs to be done to make it considerable for Hakumen to backdash. Currently it's slower and only gets Hakumen raped(there is no such thing as propertiming when opponents have attacks that take 6-10 frames to start up, can be done from a dash, etc etc while Hakumen's backdash takes about 25 frames to execute).
* Add a projectile guard point to guren(hilt), make guren with wall bounce on normal hit and have guren recover at SD +1
* Make Enma a command normal(that requires no stars), put it under 3A. Make it so that only special moves can kara cancel into Enma, so for example, kishuu -> Enma still works, Renka(1) Enma works, while Renka(2) Enma does not. This means it will require at least 1 star to use Enma inside combos. Outside combos the move will remain risky because of whiff recovery. (Also note, keep Enma exactly the same as it was)
* Make kishuu invincible to projectiles but have it pay 1 extra star if it actually tries to use that invincibility. If that star cannot be paid the Hakumen would still be hit by the projectile.
* Extend the ranges of all ground dashes(dash, Guren and Kishuu) by 50%.
* Give Hakumen the ability to use air attacks during his regular dash, make the cancel point at such a point that only jA, jB and j2C can be used.
* Make ground dashes cancelable by tapping back during his forward dash and forward during his backward dash. This might not be necessary with the ability to attack during dashes.
* Change proration on 6A so followups will do more damage. Have 6A advance further making it more useful in pressure strings. This is partially to set it apart from Enma and have it work better on people approaching Hakumen using regular jump in or airdashes.
* Whenever Hakumen cancels a projectile with an attack(excluding the modified guren), he should be able to cancel that attack, so when Hakumen 6Cs arakune's cloud, kishuu and guren should become available.
I hope most of these things mentioned are something that flows logically from the points made earlier. Though if anyone wants to know why I suggested any of the points above, feel free to ask.
