There's no doubt that Necalli is still a strong character, but after losing some of the more gimmicky assets such as throw loops (save for back throw in V-Trigger) and anti-air jabs, we more or less saw a mass exodus away from the ancient warrior as players saw better options in other characters.

We still have a few high tier tournament players using Necalli these days as NVD|Phenom, Surugaya|Machabo and Brolynho still break him out in competitive arenas, but many, including Japanese god FD|Haitani, don't seem to see all that much potential in him any longer.

With a command grab, a dive kick, a very scary jumping fierce punch, good damage output and one of the best V-Triggers, it looks like this should be one of the top characters in the game on paper, so what's exactly holding him back?

In broad terms, he does most everything decently, but nothing amazingly. Characters that can out-reach him with safe pokes essentially force him to guess his way in, and that's not fun for anybody.

The character should have to earn his offense via smart decisions in the neutral and footsies, then reap the reward of being close once he's done that. With the way SF5 is right now, he'll often times just guess jump or dash and hope for the best.

The input lag reduction will, in theory, take care of this as opponents should be able to better see forward jumps and dashes, but that's going to leave Necalli with his stubby footsies and less in the way of gimmick approaches. I agree the gimmicks should go, but something legitimate needs to take their place.

His footsie game is not bad, but is very different from the norm in that he lacks much range in his normals. As a result he winds up playing something of a preemptive footsie game where he predicts when his opponents might overextend and occupies the space where he thinks they'll end up with an attack.

Again the input lag reduction is going to harm this particular approach, so I think he'll really need something to make his footsie game viable after the update.

Extending Necalli's normal attack range would be a pretty huge change and could have deeper implications that aren't immediately apparent, so while I'd be happy to see such a buff, I'm also weary of it. Instead I think maybe a simple walk speed increase would be better.

He has shorter buttons, he's got to walk through other characters' footsie sweet spots to use them, so let him walk faster. He still risks getting hit during his forward march, but perhaps he'll be able to scare opponents into staying put with the threat of his slow, but effective, standing heavy kick.

Alternatively Capcom could make his V-Skill a bit faster (at least by the amount of frames the input lag is reduced by) so that he can manipulate effectively outside of low forward crouching medium punch range. He gets a walk speed increase when in V-Trigger, and more V-Skill usage would help him fill his three bars a little faster.

The ground pound V-Skill stands as one of his only saving graces against characters like with great horizontal space control like Guile and Balrog. It can manipulate them to come to him instead of Necalli just crashing on the rocks of their defense before he can get efficiently close.

I think anything that gives players more of a sense of control and intent in their actions (as opposed to random, "hope this works out" approaches) is good for the game.

While he hasn't been as much of a "just do it" character as a few others, Necalli has depended on guess-centric neutral more than I'd prefer. If he had a more thoughtful neutral game I think he'd instantly become more enticing and we'd see more players pick him (back) up as a result.

Necalli is labeled as boring to watch right now, and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that jumping or dashing forward to start offense isn't very impressive. Smart manipulation and slick whiff punishes, on the other hand, would make for a much more interesting viewing.

Images thanks to Copatography.