Better anti wakeup than Lion ? Lion has one of the very few reliable anti-mid rising with 4P+K into a pretty solid combo and 8K and 46K+G.
She might be better at whiff punishing rising kicks but that won't happen that much against good comp imo.

About throws Lion has 65/60 throws with ring out potential and better wall throws where Pai has 60/60 and has low throws, it's about the same imo.
One strong point in Pai throws is that most of them don't leave her sideturned (and out of throw reach) when evaded, .

Another strong aspect of Lion's throw game is that if his throw get escaped and leaves him ST, Lion can use 1P+K+G/7P+K+G and "slide" to safety

Starting messing with Jeff a bit again, and now using his jump kick to beat evades. This works really well, and beats 2p and big abare as well. Only -5 on guard too! Of course, it only deals 25 damage, but it's a nice option to have when the rest of your circs aren't that strong.

If you play a reserved game and pick your points, I can see how he might be considered D now. I never really used the jump moves before, since blaze and lau's suck (too slow to use them the way jeff can).

Krye... nobody care about Jeff .

Just based on the Pre Tribe Cup, 325 players :

32 ja
31 ka
30 ak
25 sa
23 wo
21 sh
18 la
18 ta
16 ao
15 li
14 el
14 go
14 va
13 pa
11 le
9 ei
7 br
7 je
7 jn

I don't remember seeing a dominating Vanessa player either, even if on the paper her offensive style has tons of qualities.
Maybe just coincidence, but it's intriguing.

well brad and jean manage to get top rankings regardless of a low entry number of players.

I use Aoi ONLY because she's cute and can be customized like so. Otherwise, I wouldn't even bother with this abomination

Taka is cute and can be customized as so, good thing he's atleast a good character.

It's good that you have that kind of mind set for characters like Taka. I don't have that, unfortunately

how could anyone not like playing a character that doesn't have to follow half the rules of VF?

My friend just came back from japan and was playing vf5fs there. According to the Japanese players he talked to Kage is seen as one of the highest tiers and Taka one of the lowest. Eileen and Pai, also because of their 11 frame jabs are quite higher rated nowadays, el blaze is also, even though he is light weight, seen as very strong because of his high mixup potential with very high damage. Is there some way we can gather some more information about the more recent, more relevant, tier lists? Are there still some connections with Japanese players here?

As a Taka player I never understood the tierlist posted here in 2014. Although taka has some good damage and strong basics, I always felt that his risk was too high on his mixups, the unique strings vs taka and his low defensive options forcing him to "accept" certain mixup situations because he can't force himself out of them like characters with evasive properties can. Because of this tierlist I thought that I was just wrong/playing badly, but with more and more experience I don't feel my opinion has changed. I would be interesting to see if the newer tierlist would indeed have a more realistic ranking.

If El Blaze is such high-tier char. whera is he on videos crushing enemies? I'm still looking forward for videos where good el blaze is playing.. . Maybe i saw 2 or 3 videos where good el blaze is playing.

I for one would like to see Eileen move up in the ranks. I believe she is heavily undervalued and her weakness overblown.

Hey thanks for following up on this Myke!
I am not sure who my friend talked to, he is Chinese and my Chinese language is too limited to get more information from our talks, just some small bits here and there. Getting a new tierlist is very interesting to see, Homestay's list does have a few shifts up and down compared to the Arcadia list, but that could also be personal preference.

I do agree, I have a lot of issues playing vs Wolf, Aoi en Sarah and I would think they would be ranked so much higher, so that says more about my game than anything else. Gives me confidence to keep on improving!