Which Skullgirls character forces you to understand the fundamentals of the game the most

[Midiman]

Alternatively, read as "Which character requires the most knowledge of the game to be played effectively"
Here's a strawpoll, but I would love reasons for the vote you gave, vote using this poll instead, or both!

I regularly hear stuff about "you don't have to do [x] with Ms.Fortune" or "you do not have to worry about [z] with Fukua at all" or "you can just do [r] with Bella", but most people don't tend to explain how much work they are actually doing to achieve those things they like to do, and how difficult it is.

If this topic is similar to another, I can just merge or nuke the results, but it seems like a nice question

 

[Stuff]

My vote goes to Painwheel and Fortune (Headless) both are characters that require you to understand neutral really well and the opponent and more importantly yourself. My final vote eventually went with Headless Fortune as messing up leads to an incredible punish you won't soon forget.

I'd explain more as to why headless but I feel that if anyone really wants to know the reason would be to play headless and find out!

My poor wrists.

 

[Fizzxwizz]

Personally, I was leaning towards bella and big band and decided on the big friend.

I feel like he teaches you the importance of defense, spacing, and the importance of safety.

On the other hand he kinda rewards mashing super and I'm not sure if thats conducive to fundamentals but idk. This is probably also applicable to most other characters as well.

 

[Sydoh]

Parasoul because she has all the basics and doesn't have anything super crazy like other characters have.

She has:
Fireball
DP
No air options
good buttons
decent range
average damage
Mixups generally involve things that are straightforward like standing highs or crossups using j.4LK.

The only weird stuff she has is float, bomb jump, and air tear cancels which is tame compared to what everyone else can do.

 

[Pickles]

I also went with bigband even though he's considered a "newbie-friendly" character since he can do a lot of damage with minimal effort (c.lk c.mk c.hp into hp brass into super is like 6.6k) and has, as fizz said, good reversals that reward mashing, but once you get above that low level you have to work a lot harder to get results, and have good knowledge of spacing and how to be safe.

(Runner-ups for me is Painwheel)

 

[Lilium]

based on the alternative question my vote goes to pw because after messing around and trying to learn nearly the entire roster pw has been the hardest character to master. Other characters like parasoul and fortune do require a lot of technical and matchup knowledge but pw doesnt even compare. theres a lot of depth to her tech and playing her requires some very serious matchup experience. every character needs that experience, no doubt, but it is absolutely crucial to learning pw. not to mention how technical her game can be; fly cancel loops have fairly tight timing, her inputs are easy to mess up under pressure, and you have to completely change your tactics for every matchup (every character does that but i noticed that she cant use the same tools for every match which is much different from filia or val who can use relatively the same tactics and tools for most every match).

definitely say that parasoul and big band are a close second in this because they have to deal with the same kind of problems but i felt pw was more deserving simply for the difficulty of execution and depth of gameplay.

 

[Datagram]

I voted Parasoul. I feel like she doesn't really have any one thing that she can lean on as a crutch; everything she does requires some amount of spacing/reads. She has strong resets/mixups, but nothing ridiculous. She has decent damage, but you can squeeze more out of her by learning advanced techniques. She also forces you to learn movement techniques like dash-jumping.

Also, she can't mash DP.

 

[KhaosMuffins]

I'd say Parasoul. A large part of her game is knowing which normal to use for footsies and spacing. She doesn't have insane mobility and isn't entirely zoning focused, more like she has very solid tools for lots of situations and teaches you when to use said tools. And she's not a "Whoops I hit a button, got a hit, and somehow won because of insane damage amount and/or ridiculous mixups."

 

[Swiftfox-Dash]

Peacock

 

[Datagram]

A reminder that this poll is about which character forces you to learn fundamentals, i.e. things that are useful for most characters. Contrary to @Midiman's original post, I don't think "Who's the hardest to get up and play with kek" is actually a valid way to rephrase the question.

With that in mind, I don't really know why people would say Painwheel for this. She can fly, which means that pretty much anything that you learn about movement is going to be specific to that character. Actually, I don't think much of anything you have to learn to play Painwheel well transfers over to other characters.

 

[Stuff]

In that case Bella, she has everything. Everything.

 

[Mike_Z]

The characters that have their tools most increased by player knowledge? (Though that increase happens a lot with every character in a well made fighting game.)
Peacock and Squigly. (I'd put Filia here too.)

The characters that are the hardest to just get up and play with effectively in every area?
Fortune and Squigly. Unfortunately most of this comes from playfield-awareness and execution, respectively.

Squigly being in both answers is why people thought she was crap for a long time, since she gets TONS better once you are better with her but is also kinda difficult to get better with.

In that case Bella, she has everything. Everything.

She doesn't have an airdash, a DP that can be made safe on block by spending some amount of meter, an air super...

 

[Dime]

The FUNDAMENTALS of the game?

Val.

She teaches you:

Movement
Assist confirms
Double jump offense and defense
Airdash offense and defense
Character specific combos
Corner combos
Basic left/right resets and high\low resets and low/throw resets
Burst baits with airdash (fundamental for airdash characters)
Air turtling

The only thing that I feel like val would detrimentally teach a person is that movement solves all problems and perhaps not using their reversal. But not using your reversal is something that most characters don't do. Most characters mash on that AA assist or tag out.

 

[Hilary]

Double.

She is easy to pick up and play but the amount of character-specialization her players require or can demonstrate with her kit is almost nonexistant. She's a rare example of a character that demands more knowledge of the other characters and your opponent to be effective rather than specializing in the character herself and going ballistic with her options.

Fukua is also a very, very good example of this, except with more of her own goodies to work with.

 

[Midiman]

Contrary to @Midiman's original post, I don't think "Who's the hardest to get up and play with kek" is actually a valid way to rephrase the question.

It is not, and is not meant to be taken seriously, hence the kek. I will make a new thing instead

 

[Shoes]

Headless Fortune/Squigly.

Fortune has all these weird commands with ventriloquism

Squigly has all the different Seria Charages, the three different battle operas, Mini-Charges, etc...

 

[IsaVulpes]

I am not sure I understand the question correctly.. or rather, every question in the Poll/OP seems to ask different things.

What are "fundamental mechanics"?
The way I understand the question in the Poll is "Which character requires you to understand how SG as a game works the most, rather than char specific knowledge"; eg "Valentine requires the most knowledge about when and where to call assists, how to avoid the opponents assist with your given movement abilities, how to counterpoke while spacing properly with good-hitboxes-but-slow-startup normals, etc"; "Filia requires the best bait/whiff-punishing fundamentals, as her normals tend to lose against stuff but she is too fast to be reacted to, so she has to pick her spots, see the opponent whiff a cLP AA attempt and use that tiny timeframe to go in hard"
This would eg mean Headless Fortune can't be voted for - while she is difficult to play properly, all her difficulty stems from head control, which no other character has and thus can't be called a 'fundamental mechanic' whatsoever

"Or otherwise has their tools increased by player knowledge" on the other hand would make Headless Fortune a very strong contender, as she is a bottomless pit of pressure, mixups, safety nets and zoning - her tool -namely the head control- gets immensely stronger for a long long long time while you learn her; but again, I don't see what a hyper char specific skill has to do with fundamentals.

"Which character requires the player to use them effectively in only a few situations" then looks to me like an inverse question - asking for the polar opposite of what was requested before (a character which only requires me to use them effectively in a few situations = a character which works well even if I just do random stuff in the majority of situations = a really easy character)?!

"Which character has tools only applicable for certain situations that the player needs to discover" then is again an entirely different question, asking for who has the most prominent niche tools; but this doesn't really tell anything?
You could say "Okay, Bella Horns is a niche tool that is only really applicable in a few specific situations" and it would be right, but that sort-of omits her also having access to Dynamo (.. and 50 other reversal options), which just beats everything clean - and as such, overall reversaling with her isn't exactly a difficult task

"Who's the hardest to get up and play with kek" .. you crossed this out, but again this is a very different question to the ones before. A character can have a really low skill floor while also sporting a high skill ceiling; the two aren't mutually exclusive

I can't really answer this, as I have no idea what you are actually asking about.
- "Who is the hardest character to pick up"
- "Who is the hardest character to get to a proficient level with"
- "Who is the hardest character to learn everything about"
- "Who is the character that relies the most on fg(/sg) fundamentals rather than char specific knowledge"
- "Who is the character with the largest amount of differing tools that have to be used in varying situations" (eg sporting 5 different air-to-airs rather than a single Fukua jLP)
Or something else?

 

[CaioLugon]

All these questions are way too different, I can't think of one character because everytime I read the OP I approach it differently...

So I'm just gonna say headless fortune as she feels closer to most of those even though she's super specific.

 

[Dime]

I didn't bother listening to the questions and instead went with "who is the best character to learn SG fundamentals with"

And I went with val, though I was once asked this queation before and my answer at that time was double. I still think double is also a great character to learn SG fundamentals with. And some others think it's filia.

So I can only think that team duck is the most fundamental team right now.

 

[Mr. X]

Yeah I thought the thread was "who benefits the most when knowing the SG system" which I will answer.

I would say Val, Fortune and Squigly. I think all characters can take advantage when they know it but these characters feel like they can make it harder for their opponent to take advantage of the system. Opposite of what Im trying to say is Peacock or Fukua who you need to know and use a lot of system knowledge to challenge.

 

[Midiman]

Right, now the query of the topic and the alternate are totally the same.

 

[Krackatoa]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeveryyyyyyyyyyooooooooooooneeeeeeeeeee.