[P4U2] Naoto/Shadow Naoto Discussion/Speculation

[Tong]

LV edit: Post whatever silliness regarding the Naotos in P4U's sequel here, if you find info, post it in the info thread if it's not there already~

Extra recovery on Traps and Reloading will definitely hurt her Oki and Zoning.

It really sounds like a cheap way to remove her SMP Loops. Hopefully it's not that bad.

[Zeromus_X]

It does seem odd that they would nerf her zoning tools, but let's have faith for more changes and future loketests. Maybe they were afraid that zoning would be too good along with Poison or something lolol. At least now it sounds like we have an actual DP so people can't go ham on us after a knockdown.

At any rate, this thread seems like it's for info only, so I think we should keep speculation to the general thread or make a separate speculation thread.

[ludwig van]

I just noticed in this picture that Shadow Naoto has a fate gauge; I wonder if if it'll operate any differently from Naoto's (I'm guessing not) and what moves will take it down...

[Wild Candy]

Has there been any word on how Naoto's damage output changed, if it all? Any word on if her pokes have changed at all?

I know the DP option and poison inducing special is great, but our extra recover for trapping and gun shots is going to hurt a bit...

[Raptor]

Will air double fangs (if it works like the A version) cause hard knockdown and to what extent does the move remain active? If recovery frames end while we're still airborne that would be nice.

[Wild Candy]

Hopefully the Air Double Fangs will provide decent air combos routes. At the very least, it should make a more reliable Air Ender then J.D

[Gemakai]

It sounds like j.236B can be combo'd into and combo'd from, so it seems like her overall combo damage output is increasing, but to make up for that, her gun and trap game is weakened.

Not too sure how I overall feel about that. Hope for some more changes in future tests

[Wild Candy]

The trap and gun nerf wouldn't be to bad if they managed to make Naoto's pokes less subpar.

[Gemakai]

The only thing I've heard on that is Shadow Naoto's 2C MIGHT be special cancellable, but I don't think anything concrete was confirmed

[ElegantShadow]

From what I can only guess, Shadow Naoto seems as if she'll be a bit more offensive, and likely will have higher damage output than her regular counterpart (Though, that's likely the case for most/all Shadow forms.).

[Wild Candy]

I'm guessing Shadow counterparts are all going to be glass canons. Great offensive options, but crumble under pressure because of the lack of burst and other possible drawbacks.

[Zeromus_X]

Apparently Mudoon is harder to combo into now. IAD jA, jC, > Mudoon, 236B > Mudoon, and C shots > Mudoon won't work. I guess if damage is going to be toned down universally, Naoto being able to tack a Mudoon on to anything would be a bit too good, especially with C shots meter gain. I assume 2C > Mudoon and throw followup > Mudoon are still in. I wonder if Venom > Mudoon works?

jD being able to combo into 236A sounds nice. I wonder if we get a good knockdown on air hit. Would be awesome to actually end air confirms into oki instead of a ghetto setup with jD.

236B not combo'ing from 5C is worrisome. I was hoping they would make it easier to combo into. It's annoying to not get a 236B confirm because you weren't practially inside the opponent lol. But air 236B confirms sound awesome. I wonder if we can do starter > air 236B~D > IAD combo.

5D being faster is awesome. Hopefully now we won't get insta-gibbed for trying to throw out a 55-frame move lol. Sweep > 5D being removed kind of gets rid of any 5D oki we had, but they seem to have removed one-button oki across the board.

Oh yeah, another thing I wonder is if the forward shot from her DP still wallbounces. Since we can input a followup without having to counter something, we'd basically have a fullscreen projectile that we can combo off of near the corner. That would be pretty lol.

Overall I'm optimistic about the new Naoto. Her zoning looks toned down but she got some interesting tools that help out other parts of her game. I hope we get some more info soon.

[Wild Candy]

Agreed, it's honestly looking like though that Naoto is becoming a jack of all trades character, with a slight emphasis on zoning.

But all and all, that's probably better. And with Venom Sword, that could honestly be devastating for the foe if we combo them while their life is being drained! (Could be worse then an SMP Loop!) I'm also greatfull for the actual DP, that means we won't get steamrolled and killed off of single hit from someone like Chie or Yosuke!

But a lot of these changes aren't final, since its just loctests, Hopefully that includes trap and gun recovery.

Depending on the information that arrises, this could be a good game for Naoto players!

(And let's face it! Isn't it better not to be so dependent on a glitch for damage!)

[ElegantShadow]

I don't very much mind Naoto becoming a Jack-of-all-Trades type of character as long as she can still zone and space effectively.

And Venom Swords sounds like an excellent attack for Naoto (I only hope that the overall damage inflicted by it is better than that of a certain Ninja's poison nails.).

(And honestly, I won't miss the SMP Loop at all, since I've never been able to do it. )

[Wild Candy]

Yeah, I'm not even going to bother to learn it now.

SMP loops aren't very practical, because of the execution needed, and how easy it is to screw it up. Not to mention, most experienced players know to save their burst for after they hit the wall durring Mudoon, to make you wast meter.

[Zeromus_X]

I will be glad to see the SMP loop gone too, but let's be real here: If you aren't using the SMP loop with Naoto right now, you're only playing half a character. They are absolutely practical and required to play her somewhat competitively. Saying "the SMP loop isn't practical because they can burst" is like saying "I shouldn't go for the best damage combo I can in this situation, because the opponent can just burst out of it"...Sometimes you have to go for a SMP to make the opponent burst or threaten to take away the round from them. Every Naoto should at least learn the basic SMP combos off common starters.

Back to P4C, 2C is now special cancellable. 2C > 236B will work, so it looks like 2C will replace 5C for 236B confirms. Depending on how early we can cancel 2C, it might only work in the corner since 2C sends them flying away, but we'll have to wait and see. It will be nice if we could get -2 Fate off regular confirms and still end in 236A oki.

[Wild Candy]

I will be glad to see the SMP loop gone too, but let's be real here: If you aren't using the SMP loop with Naoto right now, you're only playing half a character. They are absolutely practical and required to play her somewhat competitively. Saying "the SMP loop isn't practical because they can burst" is like saying "I shouldn't go for the best damage combo I can in this situation, because the opponent can just burst out of it"...Sometimes you have to go for a SMP to make the opponent burst or threaten to take away the round from them. Every Naoto should at least learn the basic SMP combos off common starters.

Guess your right, it best to least be able to use as a threat when things get harry, and its needed for current gameplay. Plus, i've finally gotten the hang of a simple one in the corner that goes along the lines

5B > 5C > 2C > Mudoon > Dash > 214D > 5AA > 236A~D > Trap goes off > 2[C] > 2B > SMP Loop begins.

[ElegantShadow]

I will be glad to see the SMP loop gone too, but let's be real here: If you aren't using the SMP loop with Naoto right now, you're only playing half a character. They are absolutely practical and required to play her somewhat competitively. Saying "the SMP loop isn't practical because they can burst" is like saying "I shouldn't go for the best damage combo I can in this situation, because the opponent can just burst out of it"...Sometimes you have to go for a SMP to make the opponent burst or threaten to take away the round from them. Every Naoto should at least learn the basic SMP combos off common starters.

*Sigh,* I suppose you're right. It's not like we'll be getting P4C anytime soon, so we all may as well learn what we can now and worry about what's to come later.

[Doonpa]

Major concern right now is increased recovery of traps and shots. Poison is nice, and the combo routes will work themselves out in the end somehow. Right now, Naoto is ideally to be played as a trap/zoner/spacing kind of character, so assuming the balancing is designed to promote that idea, this could be troubling. Luckily, this is the first loketest so I expect all sorts of crazy changes to happen before we get some more sound changes to happen. In the end, the final loketest is what matters so I wouldn't go nuts about nerfs/buffs just yet. I'd pay attention to the trends of changes they do and see what they spend the most time tweaking after each loketest.

As for the removal of SMPs, im totally fine over it. I'd rather deal with traditional combo routes. But, there is no reason for any current Naoto players to NOT learn them. You are just increasing the amount of work needed to win a match because you don't want to training mode a combo that winds up being almost the exact same thing each time lol. All the work has been done for you guys over these past months, so you don't even need to spend time learning a million different SMPs. They are all fairly optimized and standardized so you won't have to learn many hard variations like early on in the game's life. SMPs are not hard guys.

[Random Naoto]

I don't want to be the negative guy in this thread, so I'm just not going to say anything.

[Wild Candy]

Yeah, I was kinda stupid earlier for not wanting to learn SMP's, but that's one of the main draws of Naoto.

I've got it to the point, where I can get to the actual loop after the set in training mode 90% of the time, but I'm still struggling to actually get it done in an actual match. My neutral and pressure games seem pretty strong though, along with my instant blocking.

The Shield of Justice DP no longer needing to actually counter something is going to be super helpful for defensive options, which Naoto already has when she has meter. This won't make her low health, that much of a drawback.

[Zeromus_X]

Latest news from info thread. Shoutouts to Omex. Apparently we can take away Fate counters more than once in a combo, but every time after the first will only deplete one counter. I wonder if we can still do regular fate move > series of 1 fate moves > end in Shotgun super? This could make combos optimizing fate reduction much more relevant; but I would be a little disappointed if they make Naoto's gameplan revolve entirely around getting the fate kill. I always thought of it as her unique alternate win-condition, but not the main goal when playing her.

SB Silence super inflicts Silence, Fear, AND gets rid of 6 counters. We always had the option of comboing Silence shot after the Shotgun super to stack ailments along with Fate counters, but now we only need 75 meter for the same effect.

Mudoon has more startup, which explains why it won't always combo where it does now. It also may have lost bonus proration, which reduces it to just being an instant-kill super.

edit:

Air fangs:

A ver strikes downwards and does a small bound. 5A followup possible

B ver strikes downwards and causes a huge groundbounce. no followup because of how big it is.

can cancel all air normals into fangs. both seem to hit once i guess.

untech time in 5DD increased

reload time is like 4-5 seconds (holy shit lol what)

sounds like traps can't be used as okizeme

5DD having more untechable time will help alot with picking up afterward.

Air A Fang pickup sounds awesome

Lolwut, hope 4-5 second reload time is just a rumor...

Also no more trap oki is pretty disheartening.

[Wild Candy]

That's too bad about the Mudoon thing, but it shouldn't be too crippling considering it was mainly used in SMP Loops, which are gone.

The SB Gun Super that inflicts Silence, Fear, and Depletes 6 Fate Counters sounds freaking awesome! Imagine the damaging combos we could pull off of fear induced fatal counter when they can't burst because of being silenced!

I'm not complaining about being able to take off more fate counters in combos, but it'll suck if Naoto becomes heavily dependent on Instant Deaths, but hopefully it'll focus more on comboing the foe while there poisoned from Venom Sword for more damage.

[Tong]

By reloading, I think they mean re-filling the Bullet Gauge rather than stance cancel.

[Zeromus_X]

I didn't think about that, that would make a lot more sense. So maybe stance cancel is still fine, but we'll have to wait longer to get back a full clip. I guess we'll really have to know when and where to use bullets this time around.