First of all, I don't play Chun-li and I have no desire to play her. Of course, I have played against many, many, Chun-lis.

I don't think you would be able to find many people who don't cite Chun-li as the strongest character at the moment (maybe Herr, but along the same lines both of these characters do something that aborts the mechanics of the game and with little cost or effort, the latter obviously aborting the mechanic which is the control check and relative risk-reward mechanic the game rests on).

Has the Chun-li character 'become' to good? No. She hasn't really changed at all... She's been good since release. The fact that she wasn't errata'd/banned immediately indicates that what she is measures up to her design intentions. (At least there was one design restriction on her ability, that being that she can't play actions with her R: ).

To answer the main question by the OP, a character is 'too good' when it is seen by many as the only option (or one among a select few, all of which would therefore be 'too good') to winning a major tournament. This understanding leads to an abundance of sandbags and diversity among the top cut of players.

I guess the big question is, 'have we reached that point?' and will we even be able to answer that until after the major summer events are over? I know that your post is attempting to ask that with it's data, and I think most of us will be hard pressed to look at the data (even those that play Chunster religiously) and not say that she is markedly better than most other characters.

- dut

There is going to be a chun li in every top 8 from here til shes rotated or banned. Period.

Dosent make her too good.

There has been one or more characters like this since the games inception.

Block 1 tournies, there was always a Tira and a Tycho.
Block 2 there was always an Ibuki and if memory serves Omar alone took Voldo to the top 8s of like 5 big events.

That's another thing not being considered either. Some people just never stop playing the same character. Omar lived and breathed voldo for years. Omar is also an exceptional player with exceptional help in deck building and testing and goes to many events. That alone skews numbers. Was voldo too good? Perhaps, but its impossible to tell because of the results being skewed. Who else played Voldo, if only because they knew they would have to face Omar and risk getting diversified?

I mean hell I would play nothing but Akuma if I was able to, but I know I'm going to hit a wall of diversity if I do so I tend not to. Not out of fear, more so to be different and difficult. All this skews our perception of powerlevel because it's being intermingled with personal preference.

Protoaddict said:

Actually if you look at Rockstar's post Chun Li was not in that T8

there is always a best character. because she is the best char in the does not make her broken.

dshaffer said:

dshaffer said:

Gee, another person who can't just answer the titlular question of the thread =/

dshaffer said:

dshaffer said:

Just as Promo Cassie was right? Just like Addies Syndicate was? Just like Ira Spinta/Feline Spike was? Just like J.Talbain was?

Honestly, you people put waaaaaaaaay too much faith in playtesters and desigers. They've let a lot of moronic cards get through the cracks, and in turn they've arguably come close to destroying the game (remember during Cutting Edge when Evil won EVERYTHING?)

Chun Li doesn't have to go, but honestly if they made it so she couldn't play attacks she'd be somewhat balanced. I don't know about the rest of you, but getting two of my three-four foundations put into my momentum via an ISpin played on my turn is fricken irritating. And then she goes and ISpins two more cards away. Do you people NOT see a problem with this? Chun Li currently has three ways of being stopped that see any play (off the top of my head): Tag Along (which if you've played two cards already is a 7 diff, and wasn't Tag complaining about 7 diff in another thread), Inhuman Perception (which requires a commital, and discard of a card), and Seal of Cessation. She also has two ways of being somewhat contained in Lesser of Many Evils and the significantly crappier End it All. So currently we have roughly five cards, all of which can be stopped by things that do see play in Chunner decks (other Inhumans, KFT, Seal, Chester's). It's getting to the point where Chun Li is approaching Ibuki blind chimp levels... For those that don't know this argument, allow me to explain:

Back when Ibuki won everything, I made the comment that Ibuki could be played by a blind chimp to success. It was Chain Throw, Absurd, Absurd, Spam spam, Suzy Q dead. Simple right? Well allow me to demonstrate how Chun Li works:

Turn 1 (she goes second): After two foundations spammed by the opponant, you Chun Li and drop a foundation, preferably a Lord of the Makai or Soul of the Ling Seng Shu

Turn 1 (your turn): Spam like a champ

Turn 2 (his turn): Two forms, react with Chunners, ISpin/Hokyo Sen/Heel Snipe/Feline Spike

Turn 2 (your turn): Kill them

There's your average Chun Li game in a nutshell. Pretty mindless huh?

dutpotd said:

Best input so far

I really brought up the constant success not because I thought I'd inform those who didn't already know that Chun-Li was awesome, but rather, to show that her record when compared to others is that much higher, and then when I read her R and thought of the very inception of Reversals did I realize, much like some cop in a cheesy cartoon show:

Hey waaaaait a minute! Something's not right here...

RockStar said:

Who cares how Hugo3 would be in the current Standard Format? He'd be rotated even if he wasn't banned anyway. When Red Lotus rotates, Ibuki2 could in theory come off the "standard" ban list too, except that she won't be standard legal anyway at that point so who cares? Heck, Dhalsim3 isn't even that bad without Emptiness and Sole Survivor. Harsh, but certainly beatable.

But even without being banned, they aren't in this Standard format, period.

B-Rad said:

Or you can do the following:

Preventing the curse
Flash of the Blades
Pommel Smash
Hope for Ones People (Sometimes)
Darkness Blade
Raising Storm
Olcadans x2 (Dosent stop it but you can encounter it with a clear card pool)
Various other Form Abilities First (Communing with the Ancients, Some big Multiple + Driven By Fear, others)
Kings games + Make a Difference /
Attack -> Sakyo Ryu
Attack -> Ways of Punishment + Any discard one card
Hax on thier turn to make them fail or commit character
Rejection is usually enough to live through any of her multiples and dosen't stay in card pool
Attack -> Rashotep support or Rashotep himself
Hax the attack with Akuma or Olexa

There are more ways, I'm just to lazy to really keep posting. A lot of these answers not dependent on specific cards and almost any deck will be able to do.

I wonder why Protoaddict always pushes kings games onto everyone, it's not like he's the third guy on the card or something hehehe. there are ton of answers, the problem is the how fast you can get then online before you get a hurting. Don't forget about pommel smash right away hehehe.

as a guy who has played chun li and played against chun li i have to say that she is not ban worthy.........yet. The fact is chun li is having a great deal of success because no one has found a truly potent way to shut her down. This mainly because she has an effect that the game hasnt really seen before, with te one possible exception being elena, she can play a card on your turn. Really when you step back chun li herself is easy enough to deal with but the tools that her symbols give her are the major threat. Cards like feline spike- which i feel is becoming too much of a staple- chester's backing, ira spinta, and LOTM are what make chun li decks so scary. In my honest opinion i dont see chun li taking the national or world title this year Here are my reasons:

* She lacks a solid defense against commit-effect cards like chinese boxing, program malfunction and pyscho style.

* She does not wield top-tier symbols, high tier yes but top tier still belongs to order and evil.

* Her symbols lack defense against a card like ira spinta which is highly promenent in the meta.

* Air and water rely heavily on multiples to win their matches and chunli is no exception. Cards such as silver spoon, no memories and ichi no tachi shut that strategy down or at least greatly hinder it.

In the end the success of chun li or any deck for that matter comes down to: the skill the piloting player, the resources that said player has at their disposal (i.e the cards they have accuiqured and are using), and the ability of the opposing character to counter act your character.

In the end i have to again say let us not put chun li in front of the banned hammer until at the very least nationals are over.

For all the complaints about Chun Li, Elena used to be worse. Granted she was a 6HSer but on her turn one she could have like what 3 foundations in play? In a deck that really didnt need any to win in an environment that had chain throw, clones, absurd strength, and KFT? There wasent nearly the outrage then that there is now about chunners.

Protoaddict said:

So I'm not gonna lie, I had to look a decent chunk of thse up. I numbered them for sake of simplicity.

1. So clog my card pool, and hinder my ability to set up? And who honestly run the card anyways? Really...

2. Ummm huh?

3. So instead of just Spiking you, she blocks, then reverses with a Spike/Hyokyo Sen?

4. Unless you'rew 30+ vitality, Hope becomes Olcadan's bate because you won't end up at desperation

5. So I'll just randomly toss out a Darkness Blade turn 2, and then find a way to play an enhance (the second part isn't hard). Not exactly cost effective.

6. Dude, run a deck with that... Seriously

7/8. On turn two, how many forms do you have that don't require playing cards.

9. So I'm gonna commit one of my supposedly key Assets, and blow up one of my key defensive foundations... On my turn to discard one 4high 8 or 3 mid 5 attack?

10/11. I'm a 7 handsize character we'll say, with 20 health. I attack (down to 6 cards) and I ***/Saiko Ryu (down to anywhere from 5 to 3 cards on my FIRST FORM). I spam out one foundation, and I'm left with what? 2 cards left to defend with?

12. Only really usefull in Akuma/Olexa deck. Anything else is a waste of resources that could be used to keep you alive on the Chun Li player's turn.

13. Yes Rejection works, but Life blows, and Water is mid tier at best. If you're dual symboling Rejection, you better pray that the first two cards match two symbols.

14. Rashotep I can see, but his support doesn't work. Undisputed Ruler blows itself up, and the rest of his stuff targets foundations/assets.

15. See 12

B-Rad said:

Plenty of good players. It's a great card, don't think "oh this action rolls a three", think "this attack has a nice action side"

B-Rad said:

And that makes Chun-Li more powerful than "insert air/good/water character here"... how?

B-Rad said:

Or, you know. Blocking. Reduction. Enhance negation. They obviously don't exist... there's absolutely no way to survive that first spike! /thread

B-Rad said:

He probably has.

B-Rad said:

Depends. How many did you pack into your deck and did you mulligan?

B-Rad said:

Sure, why not? I mean, according to you and others here, if you don't do it you're guaranteed to die. Isn't survival usually a great idea? I mean... dang.

B-Rad said:

See, now you're just going to absurd lengths to defend an ailing point. Chun Li probably won't save more than 2 cards, MAYBE 3, going into your turn - maybe a block and an attack, or a card to save to pay for Natural Leader or something... which means if you're gonna *** you have to make her dump at most 1-2 cards. Secondary ditch from say Glare isn't going to set you back that badly at all, especially since you've apparently just avoided certain death or some such tripe.

B-Rad said:

Or any Life/Order/Chaos deck that can run Forethought and Anti K', or anything that runs BRT and hits the right cards with it that she will want to tap down to pass.

But BRT is a bad card

B-Rad said:

Guess what you can do, especially when constructing your deck, to help make this happen

YUP OMG

B-Rad said:

See, again, Undisputed Ruler blows itself up, but this has just saved you from total chun-li based annihilation! How is that a bad thing?

well I dunno. I mean for everything you can say Chun-Li has going for her, she does have weaknesses unlike certain other characters. Notably, if she wants to keep up on her build, she has to drain most of her hand, so she'll be holding that apparently lethal Spike/Hoyoku-Sen in hand alongside maybe one or two other cards. She can't keep many varied blocks in her hand at that point, so one easy solution would be to construct your deck against the grain somewhat - for example, builds based around low attacks can be devastating with the ratio of high blocks people tend to pack for Launcher/Breaker and Spike builds.

You can also try to block her from generating momentum using all sorts of methods. If it's foundation based momentum, foundation hate like Chesters or Mentoring. Enhances, Scroll of the Abyss can stop her from generating the momentum AND using it in the same Enhance Step. No Memories/EDD can outright stop her attacks from getting their brutal Enhances off.

Any argument that turns into "she'll just block and reverse instead" as with point 3 above, is basically admitting Chun's ability really isn't that gamebreaking, by the way... and becomes more of an argument over Feline Spike instead.

Chun herself really isn't that bad, and to me what she's really doing is preying on an overly foundation and setup reliant metagame. Decks that aren't meant to throw out attacks until they have certain pieces down or enough pieces to counteract their opponent's pieces... I'm not sure what that really says about anything but if people built decks more around attacking faster again rather than setting up for a dozen turns before unleashing lethal orange, Ms. Xiang wouldn't even be an issue. Prove me wrong here.

GeneralReaction89 said:

Best post ever

The only comment I have to say to this topic is that I picked a random-ass character that looked useful for Air when I was bored (raphael : and yet with hard work with trial and error I found a way to make him a kick-ass deck to confront many other players... so saying that a character gets too good is bull in the bull... tourney reports have no comment to this as well. The way a character is used on the valued 'abilities' is the deck having the ways to boost it. Chun-Li has obvious ones is all and you can't accept that other than saying this

"Chun-Li needs to be removed or fixed up so that starting players have a chance so we have more prey, erm, competition."

-bow-

knew_b33 said:

um, actually, tourney reports have absolute comment. It's pretty common knowledge that if something doesn't ever see play it won't ever get complained about. Want an example?

HARRIER

BEE

MarcoPulleaux said:

as in the characters, and I've played with Harrier Bee and have won with it.

knew_b33 said:

What I've done is compiled a list of characters who top 8 regionals. When a character tops them as much as Chun-Li does, um, yeah, that DOES say something about the character, hence the point of the article, "Too good? Or just THAT amazing and within the realm of balanced?"

The Harrier Bee deck I built for my friend is brutal. However, unlike Bitter Rivals, the hype for Bee died almost instantly when people realized it simply wouldn't ever see play.

I still played with my harrier bee's even though that, Bitter Rivals, had it's encore... I don't stop playing with something that works, if there's an obstacle I swerve.

and now your arguement about your hatred to chun-li makes sense now... but still silly.

I'm a person who doesn't like to see the same stuff over and over again. Top 8s should vary because characters are on a relative balance of scale. The fact that the same characters top every single time may or may not say something, hence my question.

So if T.Hawk suddenly emerged to make top 8 for the next 3 events, you would get angry at T.Hawk

No, it would have to be 8 events, apparently.

Well, 8, and one that he doesn't count at all.

MegaGeese said:

but my cuirousity includes if T.Hawk does make those events in top 8

knew_b33 said:

Here's basically how I see it

If a character keeps topping a majority of the events held this year (as many have), it goes from, "Man, it must take lots of skill to get to the top with that character" to "their power is so inherantly awesome that it's almost a guarantee you'll be in the top"

I have a problem with that second bit. The fact that if I am facing a T. Hawk, I instantly feel lax because it's just some T. Hawk, yet if it's a Donovan or w/e, I have to instantly prepare for some top tier awesomesauce.

The point, again, is at what point does a character go from "amazing, but in the bounds of balanced" to "ban". Like I'd mentioned, **Ibuki** wasn't even really used until Higher Calibur, and she only got better with both Addes Syndicate and Red Lotus of the Sun. Had J Ledezma not been so overconfident (as I feel the others are being right now), and banned Calibur and Addes earlier, I sincerely doubt **Ibuki** would've been as much of a problem. Of course, she also had Chain Broken and the best character-only card ever made.