Arcana Heart

[Necrosis]

It doesn't seem to recognize my inputs as well as GG does, and the homing button is something I haven't got the feel for.

1. Most games don't. There are little tricks to this particular game, and it does take a little bit of time to get used to, but it's not that bad. For example, I couldn't IAD at all until I stopped trying to use GG-style IAD shortcuts. They just don't work in this game.

2. Depending on your character and arcana, it has a lot of different uses, if you list character and arcana we might be able to help a bit with that.

[Hatred Edge]

I still mess up HC combos. Especially if I have the Time arcana; I end up flying BEHIND my target.

[Jet Set Dizzy]

homing just takes getting used too

[bungiefan]

I'm still trying to pick an arcana and character. I haven't memorized any full command list for any of them yet. Maori looks like someone I could get used to playing. It just seems I have torupe gettng 623 and super inputs to register much of the time I'm attempting them. I'm also working on a DualShock2, and I've got an old Pelican arcade stick that I've never got the hang of using (236 inputs always cause me to jump and are usualy incomplete, unless the stick is in my right hand, like PC joysticks are placed).

[bucklemyshoe]

think of it as a backwords J motion. or just do 6236. It's really easy after you just figure it out. (talking about the motion not the game)

[Hatred Edge]

Oddly I can only do TK 623 motions in AH but not in GG. It's part up my mixup with Kamui since her j.623A/B/C is an overhead... Why does (for i.e.) 2A,2B,2C, for anyone, the 2A doen't seem to register as part of the combo? I mean if I do it with Kamui the combo counter starts when I land 2C counting TWO hits not THREE.

[Jet Set Dizzy]

you have to do the 2ab really fast, like slide from a to b.

[Hatred Edge]

Dammit.

[Necrosis]

Maori is NOT easy. She's really good, but yeah... not easy at ALL. If you can't get motions down, you have a LOOOOOOOONG way to go. A very VERY hard, very VERY long way.

[pbjmixxa]

Latest tier-list. And, yes, Fiona is below Yoriko! Arcadia AHF Ranks Feb '08 S: Lieselotte A: Kamui, Lilica, Heart, Mei-Fang B: Saki, Konoha, Maori C: Kira, Yoriko D: Fiona

[Necrosis]

I stand by the statement that this game is way too hard to tier, and wonder why they keep trying. I disagree with all but like two characters on that list.

[CrimsonDisaster]

I stand by the statement that this game is way too hard to tier, and wonder why they keep trying. I disagree with all but like two characters on that list.

Explain why or die in obscurity.

In any case that list makes sense to me, other than Fiona being worse than Yoriko but I guess Yoriko has some tricks and gimmicks.

[HeartBuri XD]

Explain why or die in obscurity.

In any case that list makes sense to me, other than Fiona being worse than Yoriko but I guess Yoriko has some tricks and gimmicks.

Yoriko has DEM PENTS. Which makes her top tier for those precious moments, kinda like Zappa + Roah.

I never really see JP players go for pents more than once a round though(like its really needed more than once sometimes anyway)

[purify]

Kira's that low? wtf

[Necrosis]

Kira's that low? wtf

That's a big one for me, actually. She's REALLY good, I don't know why she's considered on the same level as Fiona.

I claim that it's too hard to tier because everyone is capable of winning, and beyond "yoriko is worse, lise is better" it's all up to what each player thinks more or less. Personally I think you can say there's a low, a mid-low, a mid-high, and a high tier at most, if not just a low, mid and high. And it'll be a LOT more characters in mid-high than anything else. No one is going to be entirely satisfied by a tier list for this game that isn't "yoriko (and maybe fiona) is worse, lise is better."

I'd imagine those tiers are based on tourney placement or something, more than how good the characters are honestly. It would be good to know if they really were but that's my theory.

[CrimsonDisaster]

Kira's that low? wtf

Answering you and Necrosis all at once!

Anybody who seriously thinks it's "too hard to tier" AH at this point is kidding themselves. Some characters are clearly better than the rest. Others are clearly worse than the rest. Unfortunately it's the case where 5 characters are clearly better than everybody, 2 characters are clearly the worst... leaving 4 characters in the middle to "debate" over, except at that point they are pretty clearly just the middle group. You can argue about the exact order (which is a bit up in the air) but there are pretty distinct cut-off points.

Liese is the best at this point; Kamui, Heart, and Lilica are clearly better than the rest. Try to argue that they aren't. As a group, they consistently do more damage in more situations with better pokes, better setups, and at least one thing they are way better at the cast at. They even have the best stupid cheesy BS.

Mei-Feng does huge damage in a lot of different situations, and it's more important to do damage in "random" situations than off 2ABC 6D IAD loop so she's a step up from the rest (bottom of A rank or top of B rank, pretty much). She's probably the best character in the game at that particular facet of the game. She's also pretty solid in every other aspect of the game. 5th best character, regardless of that makes her A/A- or B+, pretty much. At worst, she's like B+ with Maori, if you are being generous to Maori.

Maori is cool and all, 1-minute combos for life, but her offense isn't that great (she throws a ton of stuff at you that is all blockable the same way, oh noes) so she typically has to land some situational combo starter; when her combos are so finicky to begin with (spacing/height/arcana specific), that's problematic. Also you don't always have a minute to spare. Still, her options on defense are great and the combos are crazy damage + meter if you land them. She's a great character who just isn't quite as good as the top 4.

Saki and Konoha are good and all, but they aren't as good as the people above them. Saki needs to get close because her pokes aren't great, her clash game isn't great, she doesn't even have good un-air-blockables... all she really has is a nice high/low/throw mixup that leads to average-ish damage. Konoha is heavily Arcana dependent to do good damage; given her poor defense modifier, she just takes more work to finish someone off with before they finish her off. Also her clash game got weakened (jB has less clash judgment, for example) and she has issues when getting rushed down due to her relatively sucky defensive options (mostly has to rely on her arcana).

Kira. I personally don't think she's as good as, say, Maori. But she's better than Yoriko/Fiona. She's a scary character who forces people to change the way they play, she has all the tools to dominate a match once she has the momentum... but it's hard for her to get that momentum, and it's really easy for her to fall behind as well.

Yoriko and Fiona are the two worst characters in the game. Argue order all you want, they are the bottom two and that's what counts. It's semantics to argue if they are both bottom tier or just the bottom of the lowest tier. Yoriko is only good with pentagram activated (which means she actually needs to do it, and then she's only good for a short time) and Fiona is just not as good as everybody else in the things that are important. If her moves were a bit faster, or if she did a bit more damage, or if she could special cancel her j2C, or if any number of little things were improved, then she would be floating in the middle instead of being a bottom feeder.

[CrimsonDisaster]

Double post, but even with "upper mids" and crap, the list looks pretty much like: S: Liese A: Kamui, Heart, Lilica A-: Mei-Feng B+: Maori B: Saki, Konoha B-: Kira C: Yoriko C-: Fiona The funny thing is that the mid-tier is only big when you don't get specific. When you lump Maori and Kira into the mid, it's actually a mid-tier. When you get specific about it, all of a sudden you realize that the "mid" is actually the bottom half of the game.

[Necrosis]

I meant 4 tiers, being High, Mid-High, Mid-Low, and Low, which is pretty much what you said:

it's the case where 5 characters are clearly better than everybody, 2 characters are clearly the worst... leaving 4 characters in the middle to "debate" over, except at that point they are pretty clearly just the middle group. You can argue about the exact order (which is a bit up in the air) but there are pretty distinct cut-off points.

That, I might find a small problem with (I think Maori is better than Mei-Fang, honestly), but whatever, it'll be close enough to right. With the tier list pbj posted I keep looking at it and wondering why a whole bunch of characters are where they are in relation to others.

so I guess the more appropriate statement was that I disagree with that tier list and wonder why they're trying to break the tiers up so much.

[pbjmixxa]

I say Mei-Fang's better than Maori simply because Maori's normals SUCK! She can dominate in the air and zone you until you feel like stabbing yourself (or your opponent for that matter), but that's it! Mei-Fang has a lot more options. However, as the matchup goes, it's probably in Maori's favor. I don't play either char so I can't be sure.

[Villainous]

Mei Fang gets her damage easier and her combos are simpler to do but do asstons of damage. She's like a more mobile version of maori in terms of the "get your opening, take your combo and kill them" line of characters. Atleast, that's why I would think they were placed the way they were. But what makes Mei-Fang lower than Heart/ Lilica / Kamui? Maybe the limited arcana options with her or something? Also I think Kira is that low because back homing >>>> her throw game. Atleast in my experience. Plus like CD said, she has trouble getting the momentum she needs to be a beast. She can be good though, she just takes work and is easily zoned / outpoked.

[GreyFox86]

its a damn shame how my kira is so low on that list...but my question is why is heart above saki?

[pbjmixxa]

Heart is just generally better than Saki. She has a better DP, better normals with better clashes, as well as more damage. Pretty much anything Saki can do, Heart can do better. The only edge Saki has over Heart is her rushdown and speed which can be beaten by clashing.

[Effenhoog]

Whoa... last time I saw a tier list for this game (November?) Lieselotte was at the very bottom. What happened?

[zer0kage]

Must be old AH.

[CrimsonDisaster]

its a damn shame how my kira is so low on that list...but my question is why is heart above saki?

To extend on what pbjmixxa said:

Heart has a stronger ground game, mostly due to her crazy good normals. 6B and (dash) 5C stand out the most because of crazy range, priority/clash judgment, and how well they set up her offense. Saki doesn't really have anything on the ground that's comparable. It's just plain harder to fight Heart on the ground than it is to fight Saki.

Both of them have really good anti-airs in their 5A... but Heart also has 5B (huge hitbox and it clashes really well), 6B (for the same reasons it's a great poke), and a DP/super.

There's not really a contest when it comes to clashing, either. Heart is better at forcing clashes, and Heart is way better at winning clashes. Heart has all the standard clash stuff and a non-super DP (as well as a super)- this is important because they can't just block/HC on reaction to a super flash if you just DP them. Saki's best options are clash-confirm super, mash A in mid-air, or just hope her post-clash move is faster... standard options but not terribly good, especially since she doesn't really have any good clash-anticipation strings like some other characters do.

Then there's other little things like how, despite doing practically the same combos, Heart inexplicably does more damage (for the same meter/homing cost) most of the time. How Saki's knockdown combo leaves her way up in the air when her opponent ground recovers whereas Heart's ends in her divekick so she ends up landing about the same time.

Saki does have a better high/low game thanks to her j3C, she gets a better combo off her neutral throw, her IAD combos are easier to do for some reason, and her super is a bit more spammable... and that's about all she has over Heart. Saki is better equipped to play the game like it's... something that isn't AH. Heart is better equipped to play AH.