[CP 1.1] Iron Tager Gameplay Discussion

[A.X.I.S.]

 

 

 

New discussion thread.

Long time coming.

[just some guy]

We're shit out of luck in a good chunk of our matchups, and our backdash was completely kneecapped. What else is there to say at this point?

[TheBossGiga]

Im sorry but LOL

[Darlos9D]

I've given up on Tager and, subsequently, this whole game.

 

I'm on strike until my archetype doesn't suck.

 

::proceeds to buy xrd like a hypocrite::

[Brice]

I wouldn't say that Tager is garbage in 1.1

 

I feel like backdash is a tool that's been specialised in dealing with really particular things and not a crutch to just mash and hope for the best.

 

Also, I'm positive in saying that only very select matchups are very lopsided against us, but even then, if the other player is not seriously on point, winning is very feasible.

 

Playing Tager is a test of self control and endurance, testing if you can hold back from pressing buttons and be patient.

 

Don't give up on the game waiting for your archetype to be a god, 'cuz that won't happen in the near future for sure.

[Darlos9D]

I wouldn't say that Tager is garbage in 1.1

 

I feel like backdash is a tool that's been specialised in dealing with really particular things and not a crutch to just mash and hope for the best.

 

Also, I'm positive in saying that only very select matchups are very lopsided against us, but even then, if the other player is not seriously on point, winning is very feasible.

 

Playing Tager is a test of self control and endurance, testing if you can hold back from pressing buttons and be patient.

 

Don't give up on the game waiting for your archetype to be a god, 'cuz that won't happen in the near future for sure.

 

Are "far below averge" and "godlike" the only two options?

 

Also I never like feeling like I won just because my opponent is fucking up.

[mAc Chaos]

Isn't he still good in 1.1? Like A tier.

[Yohosie]

No. Tager is not A tier at all.

 

 

(Personal opinion. I'm a midish mid-high level player who is much better at Persona than Blazblue, so take this with a grain of salt)

 

Tager is overall a bad character. He has glaring weaknesses in his gameplan, and ultimately it comes down to him being very inconsistent in a game where all of the top tiers are highly consistent (talking about Oki, but applies to other things as well). What Tager does have is a lot of health and good punishes, so it relies a lot on blocking enough to where your opponent takes an unnecessary risk, or returns to neutral. And Tager's neutral isn't horrible against some character. His pokes are pretty solid and his ground game is definitely respectable. 5A/2A, 5C, 5D, and improved 2D are great. A/B Sledge are surprisingly effective in neutral in a lot of matchups. Games where he can poke/counterpoke to establish his ground game are often 5-5, 6-4, or 4-6 depending on other particulars.

 

Problem is is that a lot of zoners destroy him because of his lack of mobility and he doesn't really have an answer. You know it's a rough situation when most Tager v v13/mu matches almost always end in "Tager wins, or opponent wins by timeout". Arakune and Amane pose issues where Tager is forced to block, but blocking inevitably leads to free damage, forcing us to take risks. Tager v Rachel is insanely difficult because of our large hitbox and lack of a real DP.

 

Chances are if you're losing with Tager it's your fault, but in a tournament setting I really recommend having a basic sub to deal with our bad matchups. Just a Ragna/Jin. ...Or play better, whichever. You can win with any character, it just takes more to win with Tager.

 

If you're an online warrior, I don't recommend Tager. People say Tager is god tier online but try walking forward against 14 frame 1/3rd screen normals in 5 frames of lag. He's a scrub killer, big difference.

[Yohosie]

Thoughts on 1.1 changes:

 

5A nerf is really rough. It makes our confirms more difficult (read: not braindead) and forces us to take really unintuitive/sloppy feeling combos. I really hate the "feel" of this change. That said, it's not all bad news. Less damage sucks, less reward sucks, but it just means we have to be tighter with our resets and know how to convert 5A into a reset situation or better oki.

 

Backdash nerf is crap. Instead of being a solid reversal option, it's basically more of a hard read option now. Used to bait DPs, full-screen rekka type moves, supers, things like that. All characters can option select Tager's pathetically long backdash now, and in the scramble situations where you might be able to get away with it often the animation is long enough for your opponent to 5A punish you anyways. This is probably his worst change.

 

GF meter nerf is, well, also crap. It means we get to do less gimmicks off GF and are required to make more hard reads. This is especially bad in the matchups where GF oki isn't great, but bad in every matchup really. Less meter, less shinanigans, less damage.

 

j.2C buff was necessary and should have been in the game to begin with. Makes confirms more braindead and, well, better. Good, necessary change.

 

2D buff helps a lot. Makes us able to move forward without being punished for free, but we need to be careful with it still. Makes some new combos possible.

 

3C change isn't a real buff

 

Overall Tager is worse in 1.1. Some other character changes helped Tager (mainly Kokonoe is now a decent matchup in 1.1), but he still is fundamentally flawed.

[Hecatom]

I love how i bought BBCP to abandon it with the 1.1 patch

And seeing Pachi apply his dumbtastic balance ideas to Potemkin is just heart breaking

[Darlos9D]

I still stand by my complaint that any character with good midrange pokes essentially becomes an unsledgeable zoner against Tager. Or at least it turns into a unfavorable footsies situation in a game where it doesn't seem like footsies should even be a thing. I understand having a hard time with an actual zoner. That's just a balancing thing thats baically built into the archetype. It's getting rolled over by supposed "close range" characters that really drives me up a wall. We should at least be even in those scenarios, but we aren't.

 

It's like, yeah, I agree that Tager has some decent ranged poke options. But for a guy his size and strength (i.e. the ability to make his massive bulk move) he should have some of the better ones in the game I think. Dude needs to lean forward more or something.

 

Also god damn his continued lack of a real anti-air.

[Yohosie]

He doesn't really need godlike pokes. He needs good pokes, and he has them. 5D when they're magnetized is incredible. besides you only need 1 solid confirm in neutral to bring them close to you so you can just grab them and fuck them

[NumeroGaijin]

At this point, there is no excuse for quite a number of his lacks. And fixing his FC j2C and nerfing the damage is not a fair trade for something that shoud have already been there. Tager is no longer worth the struggle anymore and that is a fact. This neutered version of Tager is not at all fun to play. The struggle was commendable at one point but now.....its just silly. Mori should take his personal vendetta against grapplers somewhere else.

[Hecatom]

I put the blame on Pachi, since he is the battle planner.

[Appledash-]

Wait, Koko is a decent matchup now? Granted I'm not the most knowledgeable about tager but that matchup still looks brutal to me. What changed exactly?

Sent from my RM-917_nam_usa_100 using Tapatalk

[Brice]

Wait, Koko is a decent matchup now? Granted I'm not the most knowledgeable about tager but that matchup still looks brutal to me. What changed exactly?

 

Neutral is something you can play now. She can't really black hole Tager for free, she lost a lot of damage on everything, j.C is not overhead, regular fireball is 4 hits instead of 6, you can punish a lot of random things and blockstrings too. It's not a free matchup for us of course, but it's definitely doable. Still on the side of the harder matchups though.

 

Saying that Tager is neutered is kinda :| for me, as I see Tager as a rather good character. Granted, I cannot do 3k on my 5A, so what? It's only since not too long ago that 5A = damage (I might be wrong, but 5A never felt like a damaging starter for as long as I can remember). Sure it was a ton of meter during CSEX but that was it. And since pretty much every 5A in the game got gimped like ours, it's not that big of a nerf overall.

 

There's only 2 things that really bothers me for Tager (and one of them has been there since the very beginning) :

 

1. A real head invul anti air.

2. Something in the game mechanics that would let me out of insane airtight pressure, granted that I can Barrier IB everything in the string and that it doesn't push enough (I'm looking at you Rachel...)

 

those are my 2 crutches that I would really like, but I can live with everything else.

 

I really don't see why is it that it's not worth struggling with him anymore, as I still see him as a better version than 70% of the Tagers we had since CT...

[Yohosie]

IMO Tager's biggest flaw is that his best anti-air is to block, and with the brutual offense in this game having a clean way out of airtight pressure would be really helpful.

 

And yeah, Koko losing fullscreen activate meant we are not eternally in blockstun, and we can punish a lot of Kokonoe's stuff that other characters can't. A well-played Koko is still probably 6-4, but at that point it's mostly player skill.

 

Honestly it was a nightmare because she could lock us down with fullscreen magnets and then activate at any time, so we couldn't even walk or s.J forward without taking a huge risk. Now I can actually move around.

[just some guy]

The damage nerf on 5A isn't the problem, it's that he lost some very important combos on it which virtually kill his already weak pressure.  It just baffles me that they thought 5A>5B>5C needed to be broken.

[Darlos9D]

Yeah honestly that's the thing that keeps me from coming back. The raw nerf to 2k off of 5A is fine. Hell I'd almost say its fair. But I'd really gotten used to the fact that you could toss out a 5A, and basically not have to worry about whether or not they blocked it or it hit them until you reached 5C, or hell even 6A. Now you have to realize that before 5B even lands. Which isn't impossible, but dangit, I already have enough shit to meticulously think about when playing Tager I don't need that too. Before it was kinda fun to land a GF, toss out a 5A, and then see what happens. Now it just kinda feels like an awkward pain.

 

I feel like whoever made that decision just wanted to "show off" CP's variable "combo time based on combo starter" by changing it for some attacks in this update. Either that or he seriously felt like Tager's pressure was too simple. Why couldn't they have just nerfed 5A's P1...

 

Really after that, the backdash nerf just feels like an extra kick in the shin.

 

And more than that it's just the principle of the thing. Tager was shit in CT, but at least he did damage. Then in CS he started as complete and utter shit, but then gradually crawled back out of the hole in both terms of damage and utility over the course of several iterations, until finally we got to CP and he was actually competative. But only just so. The last fucking thing he needed was ANY kind of nerf. I just don't understand it.

[Yohosie]

You can always just do 5A > 5B > 3C instead of 5A > 5B > 5C > 6A. You should be able to tell if they're blocking/getting hit by 5B anyways, since it lets you set up tick throw situations, where 5C > 6A doesn't (and also isn't a real blockstring).

 

I find myself going having enough option selects per character now that I rarely autodial a blockstring after GF anyways. It's a good habit to break, it improved my play (though, I still miss 5A > 5B > 5C autocombo confirm)

[Darlos9D]

Right. Look, I commend your attitude of "work with what you have." It's a good attitude to have in fighting games. Or anything really. But really, how long do you think I have had that attitude with Tager? I've been playing him exclusively since CT. I've been working with what I had for as long as possible. And that wasn't much, but I kept playing anyway. But now, it's not just that I'm tired of him having about half as much as everyone else in the game. It's that for a short glimmering time it felt like, yeah, maybe he can be not terrible for once. And then I was quickly and harshly reminded that, no, he's supposed to suck on purpose. I really don't care if what he's left with after the nerf is still workable on some level, it's still a dumb thing that shouldn't have happened. And until further notice I'm not hopeful that any great decisions will be made for him in the future either. Like for instance I KNOW he won't ever have any kind of a viable anti-air, in a game where threats constantly come at you from the air and everybody fucking else has one.

 

And it's not like it's just Tager either. I'm sure other characters have gone through more dumb inexplicable changes than I even realize. The minds behind BlazBlue's gameplay have always seemed a tad sketch, and I think I finally have to admit that that's just the way its gonna be and stop hoping for real tangible positive change.

 

I mean it's sad when I sit here and think - and this is quite arguable of course - that if you pulled Hugo out of USF4 and plopped him into BlazBlue he'd probably be better at being a grappler than Tager. A fucking Street Fighter character. That's garbage.

[Ctrlaltwtf]

After grinding 1.1 a lot more I have to say Tager is at his strongest yet, honestly.

 

He's still has absurdly good gimmicks; he has insane setups other grapplers don't. The ability to always do command throws in the air is just incredible to and allows you to do setups that disable opponent's ground reversals. A lot of characters are just fucked against this, because even if they have good reversals on the ground they don't have em in the air.

 

SMP is a godlike tool for a grappler and it benefits Tager way more than anyone else.

 

5A nerf isn't that bad once you get used to it. You still get ~2k and you can still do high damage meter combos on it. 5A is a tool grapplers use to set things up anyway, rather than rely on for combos. With GF whiff oki you can do meaty 5B's anyway and still get good combos. His combo damage outside of 5A/2A is huge, too.

 

Backdash nerf makes absolutely no sense but it's not hurting me much either. Tager can just 360A everyone out of almost anything he can backstep anyway. The nerfs to everyone elses backdashes, however, is helping me. Especially vs Azrael

 

The nerfs to top-tiers as had a very noticeable impact on my matchups. I simply get more chances to win now because I don't die as quickly. Tager is so comeback-capable that is really making a difference for me.

 

The lack of a true anti-air is definitely annoying, but 2C is still dangerous. Tager's also probably the only grappler I know that can use his command throw as an anti-air with good timing as well (no I'm not talking about AC)

[Darlos9D]

Shit this is weird. I feel like I used to be the optimistic guy. What happened to me.

 

After my last tirade, I went to the CP vidoes thread to see if anybody in Japan was even playing Tager. Turns out that UNDER guy completely roflstomped the last Tachikawa with Tager. Every time I thought "this is the matchup where he gets bodied" he pulled off an impressive win. Hell I even learned a trick on how to deal with Tsubaki's DP watching him. Sure a lot of that is on UNDER rather than Tager, but I guess it made me feel a little better.

 

Sigh. Maybe I'll come back someday soon-ish. I just got a lot on my plate because I like too many things.

[AllyOfJustice]

After grinding 1.1 a lot more I have to say Tager is at his strongest yet, honestly.

 

I'm planning to main Tager so I believe in you.

[greatfernman]

After grinding 1.1 a lot more I have to say Tager is at his strongest yet, honestly.

 

He's still has absurdly good gimmicks; he has insane setups other grapplers don't. The ability to always do command throws in the air is just incredible to and allows you to do setups that disable opponent's ground reversals. A lot of characters are just fucked against this, because even if they have good reversals on the ground they don't have em in the air.

 

SMP is a godlike tool for a grappler and it benefits Tager way more than anyone else.

 

5A nerf isn't that bad once you get used to it. You still get ~2k and you can still do high damage meter combos on it. 5A is a tool grapplers use to set things up anyway, rather than rely on for combos. With GF whiff oki you can do meaty 5B's anyway and still get good combos. His combo damage outside of 5A/2A is huge, too.

 

Backdash nerf makes absolutely no sense but it's not hurting me much either. Tager can just 360A everyone out of almost anything he can backstep anyway. The nerfs to everyone elses backdashes, however, is helping me. Especially vs Azrael

 

The nerfs to top-tiers as had a very noticeable impact on my matchups. I simply get more chances to win now because I don't die as quickly. Tager is so comeback-capable that is really making a difference for me.

 

The lack of a true anti-air is definitely annoying, but 2C is still dangerous. Tager's also probably the only grappler I know that can use his command throw as an anti-air with good timing as well (no I'm not talking about AC)

Are you saying 1.1 Tager is better than 1.0 Tager? Because you sure don't make it seem that way. You're justifying the nerfs saying they're not so bad, but the bottom line is they're still nerfs. The only thing I can see that is positive for Tager is that the top tiers were brought down, but that doesn't make 1.1 Tager stronger than 1.0 Tager. So how is Tager at his strongest right now?? Maybe if his buffs outweighed his nerfs but you didn't even mention a single buff in your post.