Fukua has to spend a bar to make a reversal "pseudo safe" where other characters (Parasoul) can utilize a reversal + assist.
what's stopping Fukua from doing reversal + assist? H drill has a fairly long total animation I admit but I find it hard to believe that H drill + at least ONE of the common assists to do reversal + assist with doesn't work.
you can literally throw an assist, a fireball, or a long range normal to hit Fukua and negate the shadow summon which also goes away if you block.
as far as assists or long range normals, at any distance where those would reasonably hit you you shouldn't be charging shadows in neutral with no cover, no. Like I said projectiles not making it go away is the only change to held shadows I would think might be OK to try but it might make her too strong vs zoners when fukua can already throw fireballs at arcs to interrupt zoning as well as having BFF which is a very good tool vs chars like peacock (or at least it was before this beta idk anything about matchups with new peacock). Even if projectiles could hit the shadow Fukua would just have to go in front of the shadow to guarantee it goes through.
Like what is the point of having a neutral tool when you can't use it without an assist? Oh wait most characters that have these kinds of things also have a way to put you full screen or put you in a hard knockdown state without bar (val's vial load, parasouls tear toss, squiggly charge, beo hype, bands taunt, eliza taunt, robo head clone, peacock item drop, fortune head pressure).
of those, I would consider squig charge, robo head, para tears, and peacock item to be neutral tools. Band/beo/eliza taunts and val vials are hardly what i'd call aquiring resources for neutral, squigly can't get (or combo into, at least) a knockdown without charge or bar, and robo/peacock/para are zoners by design so of course they have tools to put the opponent further away. Fortune head pressure is an exception because it's literally half the character, shadows are not half of fukua. Fukua also has s.hk which gives you time to charge a shadow (though they get to tech) and you can easily charge shadows mid-combo (the majority of the tools these other characters have to get their knockdown or push the opponent fullscreen are going to be comboed into anyway)
I'm not understanding how this is "breaking" Fukua besides Fukua could "Combo Break" before and she still can (h drill into fire ball super into dhc) or did you forget that this exists?
This whole time you were talking about how fukua needs these changes to be good as a solo so why are you using h drill into super into dhc as a reason to say "she already has this"? If fukua has an assist to DHC into then basically none of your complaints apply anymore
I'm also interested to hear how other characters are punished for charging a resource mid screen cause last I checked no one else loses health to use a mechanic or loses a resource when they block.
Play one of the chars you mentioned before and do the thing you mentioned (vial load, squig charge, taunts etc) at midscreen with no assist and see if you don't get punished for it.
It's true that Fukua is now not as strong of an anchor as she used to be, though I certainly wouldn't say she's that bad, even without being able to charge a shadow whenever you want her buttons are very good and fireballs cover a lot of space. Her pressure game with shadows is much stronger and she has wild setups even without an assist, but yes I would agree that she is now stronger as a point/mid character. I wouldn't contest arguments that she plays differently now and I can see the side of things that these are very drastic changes to be happening in the last build of the game, but saying that fukua's shadows are useless at neutral just indicates that you haven't adapted to how her shadows are meant to be used in neutral now. You don't get to just unthinkingly throw them out alone, no.
That said I think "fukua cannot release shadows during blockstun and PROJECTILES do not cause her to lose a held shadow" might be a fair change to TRY seeing as how the two characters I would expect this change to hurt the most (peacock/robo) got a ton of buffs in the beta so they might still be able to deal with it.