How would you buff Ryu? (Includes minor buffs to Ken as well)

[Shieldlesscap]

I think at this point it's fair to say that Ken is definitely better than Ryu overall. I play Ken, but personally I feel like both of them should be around equally viable.

I think in Ultimate, Sakurai's goal was to make Ryu better in defensive play, while Ken is more aggressive, but I also think Ryu's tools aren't good enough defensively for him to be equal to Ken. As such, I'd buff some of Ryu's options to allow him defensive while still having ways to approach.
1. Hadoken:
- For Ryu, I feel like Hadokens should be stronger and should trade with projectiles and attacks. The projectile trading should also apply to Ken, but not the buff to damage.
- Ken's fireballs can be made to come out slightly faster than Ryu's just to be more accurate to SF2, but both should have a speed buff, particularly to endlag.
- I feel like you should be able to shoot multiple fireballs, or at the very least shouldn't perform the animation and be stuck in the endlag if another one isn't going to come out.
2. Shakunetsu Hadoken:
- This move should have more shield damage, one hit of it should trade with weaker projectiles while it keeps going, and it should be more than .5% stronger than the normal Hadoken if every hit connects.
3. Tatsumaki Senpukyaku
- For Ryu, the projectile invincibility should be longer. It already has a small window but it's limited.
- For Ken, there should be less endlag on the aerial version and possibly the grounded one.
4. Shoryuken
- In Smash 4, Shoryuken made you invincible on frame 1 and killed super early. In Ultimate, this was nerfed to be frame 3 and killed much later. Imo Ken's can stay frame 3, and the kill % doesn't need to be buffed by that much, but Ryu's should go back to being frame 1 just so that Ryu's has something that Ken's doesn't. Right now, Ken's works better as an aa, kills earlier when used in the air, and doesn't kill that much later on the ground.
5. Joudan Sokutogeri (FSmash)
- Increase the distance Ryu moves as he performs this move, giving it a range increase
6. Aerial Light Punch (Nair)
- Buff the frame data to be the same as Ken's

Effectively what this does is it buffs Ryu's defensive options (Hadokens and Shoryuken), while giving him slightly better approach options (Nair and Tatsu).

 

[Swordmaster102]

This coming from a Ryu main who knows that Ken is just the better character, I want Ryu to be buffed so:

1. Tatsu has greater priority against projectiles (and I mean so good that it actually can go through a samus charge shot. It’s a laggy enough move in smash and SF so it should be a gamble. If you guess right or react fast enough, it should be guaranteed)

2. N-air active time reduction so like Ken’s as you stated. (This will return his u-air drag downs and aerial combos which he desperately needs back and Ken has).

3. Light up tilt have a slightly larger horizontal hitbox. (The hitbox can wiff in some situations which are ridiculous. An example is out of a FA it can wiff)

4. Jab 1 & 2 can cancel into light or medium down tilt. (Jab combos are quite useless due to light F-tilt [punch] having greater damage. Jab is just unoptimal and this would bring more unique combos that Ryu has from SF).

5. I think you mentioned some interesting things about hadoken, but I believe the only thing that needs to be done is for Ryu to have his hadoken have less endlag. This would let Ryu actually have a “fireball game” that he has in SF. It’s negotiable, but I believe this lag reduction change should only be done to Ryu since he specializes in the hadoken.

6. Definitely bring back Ryu’s frame invisibility for shoryu. Some might disagree with it being back to 1 frame, but I definitely believe it could be slightly better than Ken’s invincibility. If not frame 1, make it frame 2. Negotiable Change overall though.

7. Medium down tilt send out a more horizontal launch angle. This will make combos into Tatsu/hadoken more reliable at higher percents and on floaties.

Some of these buffs like light up tilt and down tilt should be adjusted to Ken as well. I know that Ken will always be the better character, but the point is to let Ryu be less as bad.
If I think of any more changes needed, I’ll add them in.

 

[Shieldlesscap]

This coming from a Ryu main who knows that Ken is just the better character, I want Ryu to be buffed so:

1. Tatsu has greater priority against projectiles (and I mean so good that it actually can go through a samus charge shot. It’s a laggy enough move in smash and SF so it should be a gamble. If you guess right or react fast enough, it should be guaranteed)

2. N-air active time reduction so like Ken’s as you stated. (This will return his u-air drag downs and aerial combos which he desperately needs back and Ken has).

3. Light up tilt have a slightly larger horizontal hitbox. (The hitbox can wiff in some situations which are ridiculous. An example is out of a FA it can wiff)

4. Jab 1 & 2 can cancel into light or medium down tilt. (Jab combos are quite useless due to light F-tilt [punch] having greater damage. Jab is just unoptimal and this would bring more unique combos that Ryu has from SF).

5. I think you mentioned some interesting things about hadoken, but I believe the only thing that needs to be done is for Ryu to have his hadoken have less endlag. This would let Ryu actually have a “fireball game” that he has in SF. It’s negotiable, but I believe this lag reduction change should only be done to Ryu since he specializes in the hadoken.

6. Definitely bring back Ryu’s frame invisibility for shoryu. Some might disagree with it being back to 1 frame, but I definitely believe it could be slightly better than Ken’s invincibility. If not frame 1, make it frame 2. Negotiable Change overall though.

7. Medium down tilt send out a more horizontal launch angle. This will make combos into Tatsu/hadoken more reliable at higher percents and on floaties.

Some of these buffs like light up tilt and down tilt should be adjusted to Ken as well. I know that Ken will always be the better character, but the point is to let Ryu be less as bad.
If I think of any more changes needed, I’ll add them in.

I like a lot of these changes, but I feel like the Jab change might be a bit broken. Allowing you to cancel Jabs into your Tilts wouldn’t work because said tilts can also combo back into Jab. I think the point of Prox FTilt is to make a slightly more difficult but also slightly better version of Jab.

That said, I think it’d be really interesting if Ryu’s jab combo was changed so it ended in a stronger move that could then combo into Hadoken?

I think medium DTilt is fine as is for Ken, but Ryu I can see benefitting from it. That said, for the sake of not adding more moves that are different between them, would it also work to just increase the hitstun instead?

I agree with Up Tilt, although tbf, off of FA you can use Jab or Prox FTilt instead assuming you want to end with a dp.

One thing someone mentioned on the Ryu/Ken discord server is the idea that Shakunetsu should have transcendent priority, allowing it to eat projectiles and keep going. How well do you think that could work?

In general though, one thing I think they should try to avoid is to focus on buffing Ryu’s combo game. Yes, it’d make Ryu a better character, but I think it’d also make his playstyle too much like Ken’s, so I think they should focus more on buffing some of his zoning options (which is why I did so much with his fireballs) and make him do better off of raw moves while Ken does better at kill confirming. That said, Ryu should still also have some combo ability, which is why he should have his Nair back.

Overall though I agree with some of your changes, though I’m curious to know if there’s anything you think they could do to his defensive game that would make him and Ken about equal?

 

[Swordmaster102]

Cool to hear back from you.

As of the jab, I see what you mean about if lights were able to link, it could be a combo on an endless loop. So light tilts is definitely a no, but I still believe that jab 1 or 2 could still link into medium tilts and be reasonable. Take for example medium u-tilt and medium d-tilt. If these were possible to link into you could do combos like N-air (falling)>Jab1>Jab2>Mu-tilt>Shoryuken or even Jab1>Jab2>Md-tilt>tatsu. Even though you have to hold forward for the Prox f-tilt, the range is relatively the same and the combos are as well. The only thing is jab does less damage, so I just think jab needs some love and more traditional combos from SF could be integrated into it.

For the medium Down tilt, adding greater hitstun
to both Ryu and Ken’s would be somewhat reasonable for Ryu since he is slower, but if Ken got more hitstun on the move, he most likely would be able to make some ridiculous true combos possible. One that comes to mind could be Md-tilt>Jump>d-air. Making the move have greater hitstun could be an extremely powerful change (lots probably would hate). In all honesty, I think it would just be best to change the angle slightly it sends the enemy (closer to the x-axis).

When I gave the illustration for the light up tilt with FA, it was just an example, but I think you get my point. The move is just pretty unusable in many situations because it lacks range.

Regarding the possibility of Shakunetsu having transcendent priority, I think it’s an interesting change overall. I totally think that shakunetsu could have a bit more priority against enemy projectiles, but it can’t be at the level when it could eat up almost every one (for example a full charge shiek’s needles). Shaku is still somewhat spamable so giving it an extreme amount of priority would just be op in my opinion. Though, to increase its priority some would not be harmful (I’m on board with that), just not too much.

Ken is definitely a rush-down fighter, and I believe that he should not necessarily have more combos, but have more threatening set-ups. Besides some universal changes to the shotos, I think Ken is good where he is. Ryu on the other hand definitely should be more of a fire-ball game and defensive character (though still dangerous if fighting up close as you know). I would have to give it a long thought, but the main changes I think would help Ryu would be to:
1. Reduce his hadoken cooldown
&
2. Maybe increase shakunetsu priority.
Those two changes could be enough to make him tied (or ever-so slightly below) with Ken.

 

[Shieldlesscap]

Alright, so before I reply there’s one thing I think is worth clarifying, being that Ken and Ryu actually have the same Air Speed. It’s only their ground speed that’s actually different. I bring this up because about what you’re saying with DTilt, pretty much anything Ken got from it, Ryu would get as well. Changing the angle on DTilt could work but that’d also take away Ken’s DTilt -> Roundhouse. At least as Ken (might be different for Ryu), DTilt -> Hadoken almost always has no problems connecting, and you could add a small hitstun buff just to make it more reliable without allowing for that much extra time where you could run forward, jump, and get a Dair out in time.

Hell, they could also add a hitstun buff and then add more endlag. It wouldn’t affect any current combos because you’re already going to be cancelling the DTilt into a special, so adding endlag would just prevent comboing using jumps unless they somehow decided to add so much hitstun that you have time to FADC the down tilt and still get a hit in.

As for Jabs, letting it combo into DTilt is fine, but heavy Up Tilt would be busted since against shields you could literally link heavy Up Tilt into Jab into heavy Up Tilt etc. until you get a shield break. Only reason you can’t just link Up Tilt into itself now is because of the pushback, but the two jabs would move you forward enough that I’m pretty sure it’d be infinite. I definitely think light jabs should have a better combo finisher than your two kill moves, but I’m not sure what. Maybe they could make the 3rd hit another move without knockback and then add a 4th hit that launches and can cancel into specials? I think that could work as a combo move out of jab similar to Ken’s CK.

With light Up Tilt I agree. Imo it should have a Smash 4 hitbox but a slightly higher SDI multiplier, so you couldn’t spam it as much but you’d at least get in a bit or two.

In terms of Shakunetsu, one idea that I think would make sense is if every hit of it trades with one projectile? Imo it should be able to trade with Sheik needles but not keep going, and something like a charge shot would break through it, but most other projectiles would just be ignored.

Oh also, increase the hitbox size of Ryu’s fireball.

 

[Swordmaster102]

Alright, so before I reply there’s one thing I think is worth clarifying, being that Ken and Ryu actually have the same Air Speed. It’s only their ground speed that’s actually different. I bring this up because about what you’re saying with DTilt, pretty much anything Ken got from it, Ryu would get as well. Changing the angle on DTilt could work but that’d also take away Ken’s DTilt -> Roundhouse. At least as Ken (might be different for Ryu), DTilt -> Hadoken almost always has no problems connecting, and you could add a small hitstun buff just to make it more reliable without allowing for that much extra time where you could run forward, jump, and get a Dair out in time.

Hell, they could also add a hitstun buff and then add more endlag. It wouldn’t affect any current combos because you’re already going to be cancelling the DTilt into a special, so adding endlag would just prevent comboing using jumps unless they somehow decided to add so much hitstun that you have time to FADC the down tilt and still get a hit in.

As for Jabs, letting it combo into DTilt is fine, but heavy Up Tilt would be busted since against shields you could literally link heavy Up Tilt into Jab into heavy Up Tilt etc. until you get a shield break. Only reason you can’t just link Up Tilt into itself now is because of the pushback, but the two jabs would move you forward enough that I’m pretty sure it’d be infinite. I definitely think light jabs should have a better combo finisher than your two kill moves, but I’m not sure what. Maybe they could make the 3rd hit another move without knockback and then add a 4th hit that launches and can cancel into specials? I think that could work as a combo move out of jab similar to Ken’s CK.

With light Up Tilt I agree. Imo it should have a Smash 4 hitbox but a slightly higher SDI multiplier, so you couldn’t spam it as much but you’d at least get in a bit or two.

In terms of Shakunetsu, one idea that I think would make sense is if every hit of it trades with one projectile? Imo it should be able to trade with Sheik needles but not keep going, and something like a charge shot would break through it, but most other projectiles would just be ignored.

Oh also, increase the hitbox size of Ryu’s fireball.

Yeah I hear what your saying about medium d-tilt. Changing the endlag is an option they could take in doing so. In all honestly though, it might be just better to change the angle only for Ryu so it won’t interfere with Ken’s combos. I don’t think Nintendo would do that though since it sounds like a change that would be universal, but only one could dream.

As of the jab into heavy u-tilt, I’m having a hard time following. Heavy (medium) u-tilt has quite a bit of endlag and I don’t really see that ever combo-ing into another jab. If I am somehow wrong, let me know though.

I get what you’re saying about shakunetsu, but there would just have to be a healthy balance on what it can and can’t go through. For a shakunetsu to be able to absorb a whole charge of needles is bit far in my opinion. Attacks where the projectile has to charge a bit I believe should absolutely tear through a shakunetsu. In SF, shakunetsu has multiple hits it can dish out, and each one can eat up a single hitting projectiles, but for that same thing to apply in smash could be too strong (especially since shakunetsu hits at least 5 times if I’m correct). Maybe have it to where every two hits from the shakunetsu can take one projectile? Something similar to that I think would be more appropriate.

I don’t think they need to increase the hitbox size of his hadoken.