With the announcement of the rotation and only 5-point going on for about... what was time length? I heard 2 years somewhere in the video... but don't put it past me to hear wrong.

Anyway, I'm now starting back at square one with this rotation hitting the fan and am defintily wondering what cards/symbols will rise up from the gutters. Any postitive output for Air will make me smile, if none exists, then I'll have to try harder.

commenting from something I heard in the video; A promo Tag Along would be epic.

If Tag Along stays in the format, my Yi Shan** deck switches to Earth , no questions asked.

As far as Air is concerned, my money is on Zi Mei** , if only because she can abuse a combination of both her character abilities with Solitary Assassin to give an attack Multiple: 2 , and then make 3 momentum AFTER the Multiple ability is played (which in turn can fuel the Execution Rites or Fury of the Ancients ). There just isn't that kind of momentum generating power anywhere else in Block 4 .

Hell, here's an interesting combination: You have 2 momentum. Play Execution Technique First Rite . Give it Multiple: 2 . Play the Multiple , and use Zi Mei ** 's R ability to get 1 momentum back. Use Solitary Assassin to turn that used-up Multiple ability into 2 more momentum. Use Always in Motion to clean out the copies after they resolve. If you have the spare foundations and another copy of Solitary Assassin and Always in Motion , repeat the procedure with Execution Technique Second Rite . To boot, you'll still have enough momentum for Execution Technique Third Rite ! Cool, huh?

Holy Executive Techniques Batman!

took a few reads but I get it now, maintaining the flow of momentum with the first two attacks and still be able to plow through the final... it's 24 damage anyway with the three attacks, but I didn't try to think of her abilities... probably 'cause I love how Temujin plays xD

SCREW YI-SHAN!!! ugh, my roommate played him when we got a box a piece and screwed me over by putting all my attacks under 0 or 1 instantly... erg, then the Dragon Punch or whatever it is dealing about 20 damage per swing

I would have to say right now Fire is without a doubt the best symbol in Mini Block. 7 different character have the Fire symbol. Thats more than any other resource atm. Fire has the best attacks for sure. You can run Launcher/Breaker, Fury of the Ancients, The Executions Rites, Dragon's Flame as your kills. It also has the best utility attacks in Pommel Smash and Zi Mei's Wheel Kick. It's foundation base is also the biggest but that of course is because we got 7 Fire characters in Set 12.

I would say Death and Air are pretty high up there as well.

Order is pretty much the worst symbol in Mini Block(Astrid and Hilde beings it's only characters both of which are just better off of Fire) and with 4 of the 5 characters in Tekken not having Order(And we are not even sure if the last one does) that is not going to change any time soon.

Sol Badguy said:

who is the 4th teeken character? I only know of King kazuya and nina.

king, kazuya, jin (i think), christy, nina and one other...

so what about those control symbols; Death Evil and Void

how much more annoying do you think they'll become?

Paul Phoenix is the 5th, there is no Jin in the set, he is a promo

I really want to know what Paul Phoenix does well even if he isn't as good as kazuya or the others I will still play him.

Don't worry...pual's support is very easily the best of set 13. I was scared shitless of him in standard, but as of now with the rotation he is just very ,very good . Order won't have any problems in the new standard because of him.

In all honesty if you want to go and play like block three go fire. It gives you straight up aggro and huge hitters. If you want control and damage reduction go earth. Earth will offer you something you something that the others can't. That is straight up survivability along with huge damage. People slept on Fury of the North but it is a kill condition card. It allows you to gurantee kill an opponent with certain throws and combo attacks. Yi Shin has the cards for damage reduction and control. The only thing that needs to be fearful of is momentum drain and foundation destruction. Life gives you the plink to death options that work. Combine Ivy's attacks with Seigfrieds finishers and you can do lots of damage in one turn. Turn 3 or 4 k.o is not out of the question if you are able to get your Ivy foundations out there.

All in all I would tell people not to just go off of forum advice. Look at both Shadowar and SC4 yourself and take note of the sets by symbols and start thinking stuff up. I did that the other day and I came up with 3-4 deck ideas. Yes there is more risk then before but there is more reward for the risk this time.

RIGHT NOW Water and Order are without a doubt the worst symbols in the format. Why? Every single card with Water has Life, and every card with Order has Fire.

Tekken hopefully will change this :s

I agree that Fire is probably just about the strongest symbol in miniblock, although it's definitely a very competitive game... a bigger card pool doesn't mean much when many of those cards might not play well together. Temujin's stuff is janky at best if you're not using combos

Air IMO is pretty low on the list, sadly. Unless you want to run some ExecutionRites Tira deck, or a Shredding Vibrato Zi Mei, I just don't see much going for it. You only have 3 characters, and two of them (Zi Mei and Temujin) both have Fire -- so for them, the base of cards from Nightmare, Ragnar, Hilde, Astrid and Astaroth will be stronger than the base from Tira, and for Tira the same holds true in reverse (but for Life/Death instead). Maybe Air could be useful as a secondary symbol -- splashing Solitary Assassin to your Tira deck for some momentums, for example.

And of course, right after I finish writing that, I look at THD and have an idea for a Temujin deck built around his free Powerful:3 enhance, which would likely work best on Air with Solitary Assassin for the best damage :

Thing is people are now looking at symbols they thought they would never touch.

bloodocean said:

That just means that he will still be better run of of his other symbols and Order will still be crap.

I don't think Air is bad at all. On top of the Rites and Fury it has Menuette Dance and Vibrato as well as the best methods of gaining momentum/card pool clearing atm.

Personally? I'm thinking Earth.

currently at the moment, with what my roommate an I have established after opening two boxes of each SoulCal and Shadowar...

Earth is back to the way I saw it as; My turn I'm beefy, your turn I'm stalwart... kudos for Yi Shan having both and sweet for Astaroth having just himself. I even built a Rashotep/Siegfried build around Earth at first and found out it ends up slow when you wait for your opponent to play an abilitie of 'x' so then you may trigger with your foundation 'y'... so I went on and changed it up as an aggro pull with the great attacks and then pulling the opponent to use their abilities and shunned. Mainly on my turn is when this happened.

Fire... Astaroth, Nightmare, Astrid, Ragnar, Hilde... and I think there was one more on that list that made Fire wickedly fun. Astrid most of all just made it interesting with that keyword shenans of saying 'Weapon Cards' in your discard... silly foundation and your weapon keyword. Astaroth and Nightmare went like hand-in-hand on the dark, abyssal sunset destroying foundations left an right then pummeling the picnickers.

All... a symbol I've not really played before but with Algol and Astrid, that got changed up massively with Discarding from Algols character and then doing the pumping and drawing from Astrids support. The symbol also has Ivy but when trying to find that connection between these three at once... did not prove succesful to me.

Order... never tried

Void... bleh likewise

Evil... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA what crazy shenans that was. Zhao Daiyu ---> I'mma removing your cards and still kicking your ass with Nightmare backing me up xD. I enjoyed the idea of Cervantes but I loved his support far more. I just don't quite understand the purpose of having to do an additional CC to upgrade my CC by 1.

Chaos. Zi Mei and Algol belong together... it's soo in the cards all I can really say since I can't remember the craziness I did... **** alcohol

Death I actually had fun using Ragnar in this symbol because of... I don't know, I was curious. So what ended up happening was, I looked at his second ability, grabbed all the throws and low/high zone attacks then nabbed the foundations that either did mass pump, damage reduction/insta-block, and having the Rashotepness take over for the funness of saying "My attack hurt you, it's now a blank foundation"

... and now I'm passing out on my laptop so I'll continue my post later...

At least one card of Ivy's goes with the others for all.

Researching the past.