Your team(s) for XIV

[YBNDM]

Don't have the full game yet but my main team would be Luong, Mai, and Leona. Another team might be Mature, Vice, and Zarina.

[Ginorm]

Took a bit longer then I expected to settle into a main team. Been having a lot of fun just doing lab work on a bunch of the cast to figure out what I like.

Main Team: Muimui, Maxima, Terry

Future Members to switch in and out:
Joe
Nelson
Geese
Banderas
Angel

[Chrome Homura]

This is the first time a new KOF has come out with me actually having tourney level experience to build on from the previous entry, and I've loved just about every second of it so far, the rare exceptions being my discovery of certain normals no longer being cancel-able... but I've quickly overcome that, and settled quite comfortably into my new iteration of the team that I've wanted to bring to a major ever since I grew into my understanding of who they were as characters...


King has lost air Venom strike, but that's more than a fair trade for the midscreen confirms she gains in XIV's max mode. Her damage isn't top tier but her maxmode confirms are generous, she no longer needs the corner or more than 1 bar + a drive just to stay on par. I can play the neutral game with her normals the way she always has, and Silent Flash replaces EX trapshot quite comfortably. Also her Climax is ridiculously strong, she can even do it in mid-air and after seeing so many games where Illusion Dance was just bad compared to other ranbus... yeah, it's incredibly satisfying to see that dazed look on the opponent's face when they're reeling from the last kick. Her "edgelord" palette even looks better than that monochromatic one in XIII, color 3 is much more tasteful for her character and even matches up way better with my choice of teammates...


Mature has EX Heaven's Gate. This is exactly the tool she needed badly in XIII, and it just feels so damn good to call out sloppy jumps and bad specials with this move. Her neutral is just as graceful and slippery as ever, and her raw maxmode activations are incredible. The result of the latter in particular seems to be that she's seeing a lot of top 8 action on the WNF circuit, and just tonight I saw two different maxmode combos I didn't know were possible yet. Both of them were from Isauro (who was my favorite Mature to watch in XIII, he's the only one I ever saw landing EX qcb+BD xx cl.C link combos and I respect that a lot) so needless to say, things are going really well for her so far in XIV.


Vice... unfortunately has yet to see much success in tournaments, technically I don't yet have a great idea of what optimized XIV Vice looks like so my observations could be off. But from my experience, she seems considerably better at playing offense/neutral, in spite of not having the ability to EX sleeve off of air-to-airs. Her jump arc is less floaty (I.E better) and her old cr.C is a considerably better anti-air than the one she had in XIII. A 1-frame command grab is still a really useful tool to have, and despite not knowing the new safejump setup off of that (until realizing as I wrote this that there's a thread right here on the forum, just checked it out and I'm good to go lol) all in all things are shaping up. She has potential, and above all else I feel like the time is going to come where I can choose to put her on point for a specific matchup and have it pay off, something that was considered unorthodox to the point of being basically unheard of in XIII. Much in the same vein I feel like King can legitimately pull anchor duty, so team order is now something I can mess with based on what I'm up against instead of a strict hierarchy determined solely by the constraints XIII's systems placed on these characters.


So yeah, that's me in XIV. Anyone want to help me officially name this team? I'm thinking either "Classy Ladies' Team" or "Women's Suits Team" ...or something. There's probably a variation of either concept that flows better, but idk right now.

[enersha]

I havent started playing the game yet but im lookin at Benimaru, Geese and Tung


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[FatalFRAME]

For now, since I'm still getting used to the game, such as mastering hops. Billy Kane, Kyo and Terry. I want to master these 3 before I start moving on to other characters that I really want to try because I never played KoF at a competent level. Hell, I did want to main Chang, but he just downright sucks, I had to replace him with Billy Kane.

But yeah, Billy Kane seems like one of the best characters to learn the game with, with him u can easily focus on the overall flow of the game such as staying mobile(I had to learn the hard way)and the new mechanics benefits him alot with his st.C, Basically a strong whiff punish tool and u can practice on mastering 1-hit confirms. I have trouble with doing short hops and hyper short hops during fights so his jumping C kinda helps back me up from mistakes.

I generally choose characters who I'm most fond of from seeing in the past is one of the reasons why I wanted to use Chang.

In the future, I do plan on using xanadu and geese in the same team with xanadu on point as a battery character, because it looks like xanadu can build insane meter for geese with his safe specials and he has a command grab, also his cr.D looks like a good anti air.

God I wished I've played KoF at a competent level in the past because I basically have no matchup experience and what each character excells at doing, needing matchup experience against 48 characters? It's gonna be A WHILE.

[Chrome Homura]

FatalFrame, if I were you I wouldn't worry too much about matchup exp. The sheer number of characters may seem intimidating, but in reality there's less information per character to absorb than in a 1v1 fighting game, and learning a matchup should be a relatively quick process. For example...

Vice's important special moves are her command grab and sleeve (hcf+B/D) the command grab gives her a safejump and the sleeve is a blockable attack that converts into said command grab while covering a decent portion of the screen. It shouldn't take more than a few rounds fighting against someone playing this character for the applications of these tools to become apparent, but while it might take you a bit longer to figure out how to beat her normals with all 3 of your characters, the "matchup" in a general sense should be easy to understand. Granted there are characters with more complex gameplans than the one I've just described here, but it shouldn't be something to feel overwhelmed by. Go forth and learn!

[Vokkan]

My team ended up pretty far from what I had planned, mostly because I got tired of training mode, but also having my weaker characters dunked on (Billy, Tung, Chang).  

On point: a 10min Iori arguably pulling the most weight on the team (I have some past experience though).
Middle: Ryo, which I wasn't gonna play b/c his shrunken fireball and lack of a long range cancelable normal.
Anchor: Maxima, the only really new addition, basically a beefier Ryo with a 1f command grab into 740dmg.

Basically I have a penchant for mid range zoners, but begrudgingly have to admit that rushdown characters gives me more wins.