Season 2 Bison changes and thoughts

Most of this will be written from my point of view as a Bison main, but I’ll touch on overall system changes as well. I didn’t really look at other characters in depth.





Bison has received a lot of changes, almost all of them buffs. However there are clearly some frame data differences that I did not have the time to check, so this list does not have every single change. That being said, I can say for certain that the build of Season 2 at PSX is the finalized build, there will be no changes from PSX to the release date of December 20th.





+st.lk is now 3 frames

Pretty easy to see why this is strong. Not only does he have options to mash out of opponents’ pressure, no one in the cast can challenge Psycho Axe with their 3-framer anymore. On top of that, cr.lk st.lk now works, and his light confirms are much easier than before.

+st.lp has 1 frame more hitstun (possibly more)

This is nice because st.lp now links to lk scissors. It’s got a little more application for tick throws and shimmy now as well.

+combos out of Hell Attack and EX Stomp are much easier

It used to be that, in order to link Inferno after Hell Attack, you had to be at a certain angle and adjust your timing. Now you can just do normal timing and Inferno combos easily. If EX Stomp hits air-to-air the follow-up to Skull Diver is much more lenient, your height doesn’t matter. In fact you can now do it very low to the ground. On top of that it knocks the opponent down to the ground, and I assume there’s meaty pressure from that.

+v-trigger scissors now have more invulnerability

Didn’t get to test this too much but it seems like the invincibility frames start earlier.

-v-trigger scissors are now less safe on block

That being said no one punished me for this in tournament, so I’m not sure how true this is. Even if it is true you can still keep it safe with a cancel to an EX move.

+EX Stomp at least in V-Trigger has more invincibility

I may be wrong about this and people may have just had trouble meatying me due to the new system changes, but I got away with this a lot, and I felt like I went through mediums and heavies which was difficult to do if not nearly impossible in Season 1. Now I’m wondering if you can do something like this vs invincible reversals: EX Stomp (read opponent’s DP), EX Stomp again (invincibility phases through the DP and hits them).

~Shadow Axe (target combo) is now wildly different

The gap between st.mp and df.hp went from 5 to 3 frames, meaning no one can safely mash in between aside from invincible moves.

It combos without st.mp being counterhit, but now it doesn’t lead to any combos without V-Trigger. It also no longer links to st.hp after a V-Trigger cancel, but cr.mp works.

It is now -8 on block.

What this means now is that Shadow Axe is more like a “party starter” for V-Trigger. It’s a great easy punish even without counterhit. Think of it like Urien’s target combo without the overhead.

There may be other application for this in the future, but for now this is how I see it being used.

+The trajectory of EX Devil’s Reverse (at least out of V-Trigger, possibly in as well) is straight instead of a slight curve.

Why this is good: cross-up whiffs (Galtu-style) are now a bit more ambiguous.

+EX Devil’s Reverse now has juggle properties on counterhit

I was able to combo into Psycho Axe off of this in the corner, so I’m sure you can combo into almost everything either for damage or resets.

? Backwards walk speed seems to be faster

The person at Capcom I talked to seemed to indicate that there was no change to Bison’s walk speed, but it seemed like he walked backwards a bit faster, which made cr.hp easier to use. But it could have been my imagination. (As an aside, cr.hp seems unchanged)





So now let’s talk about the general system changes and how they affect Bison.





+Meterless DP’s are now weaker

Some have lost all invincibility, some now have partial invincibility (strike invul but no throw invul for example), some have invincible frames but not on startup. People being even more scared of pressing buttons against Bison is a very good thing. Keep in mind though that all of the meterless DP’s that now have no invincibility at all cannot be crush countered (think Ibuki).

+/-Recovery after a successful throw is much longer

This now means that eating a throw midscreen is not a death sentence like it used to be against some characters. However this rule applies to Bison as well; he used to be able to do Head Stomp pretty quickly after a forward throw, now he recovers way way later. I didn’t check to see if this put him at disadvantage after a corner throw, but midscreen I felt like I didn’t gain much advantage at all. Bison’s back throw is exactly the same as before though, and you can get a meaty Psycho Axe no problem.

-Recovery after a successful knockdown V-Reversal appears to be longer

From my experience this affected Bison and Karin pretty hard. You used to be able to do dash up cr.mp meaty but that is definitely impossible now. Ken and Chun (whose V-Reversals leave the opponent standing) seem the same as before.

? Meatying feels different???

This might be because of a specific change to Bison’s dash that I wasn’t aware of, but what used to be an autotimed meaty after a knockdown now wasn’t. This may also be due to the monitors being slightly laggy. Autotimed meaties from MP Inferno -> whiff LK Scissors still work though.

~Meter gain nerf and damage nerf across the board

This doesn’t really affect Bison that much. If anything slower meter gain means more incentive to not spend meter on EX Scissors just to stay safe. Lower damage isn’t a big deal as Bison’s is still pretty good, and personally I don’t mind having to go for resets.

? faster V-Gauge build

Didn’t notice this personally but when someone pointed out that when I hit someone with a CC st.hk, I gained almost an entire pip of V-Gauge. This is pretty ridiculous for Bison if true.





Final thoughts: Bison honestly feels like one of the best characters in the game to me now. He’s also much more fun and much more oppressive. He’s closer to a real boss character than he’s ever been in a main SF title. Honestly you should foresee nerfs for Season 3, haha. But December 20th, 2016 to December 19th, 2017 are going to be a lot of fun.

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