Free Step Dodge

He is not every difficult to use or get the hang of. Out of difficulty for the ninja it goes Hayate < Kasumi < Hayausa < Ayane.

Hmm ... I would say Ayane is easier as Hayabusa ... I made her command training, it's nothing compared to the difficulty of Busas throws and holds .. ok she might not be as save as he is.

What about Momiji?

Its not just whats in the command list or thier execution. To master Ayane's movement / evasiveness and tools takes a huge amount of dedication and time. That's why you see so few players use her even though she is one of the best characters in the game; arguably S tier.

Momiji extremely easy to use. She is more easy than Hayate because she isn't as unsafe as he is and is beginner friendly because you only need to know one string. That one string is used in ALL of her juggles with little variance.

It's not actually Hayabusa's command execution that make him so difficult to use, though his are harder than most. What makes him so challenging is that he blankets terribly and struggles so hard in the neutral game. He gets good damage, sure, but honestly ability to dominate the neutral game and maintain pressure is paramount and trumps damage output (compare Christie/Helena/Pai to Bass).

Brute by blanket I'm assuming you are referring to masking free cancels?

But yeah, like Ten said, Hayate is the easiest of the Core Fighters to pick up and use. It's not an execution thing exactly, as in that regard, Hayate would be the hardest due solely to the Raijin throw. It's more about fundamentals, and Hayate's got lots of them and most are very intuitive.

Blanketing means beating out options. For example, Sarah's 6P is an i11 mid that crushes highs and has follow-ups. Momiji's old 2H+K crushed all mids and highs for a +on NH low. Those options are "blanketing" the majority of options the opponent can utilize.

"Ayane [...] you see so few players use her"
What planet are you living on? lol

Anyway, Ayane is very challenging to master, but imo, is only around the middle in terms of ease of access to start. She has great pokes, good string mix-up, excellent zoning, amazing crushes, etc. that new players can utilize decently. Mastering those fundamentals takes much more effort however.

Despite Hayate, Ayane is probably the character I face the most online (can't agree with you here Ten ). Not to mention Hayabusa. So I guess it's finally not the difficulty what makes people using them.

lol Brute, my thoughts exactly xD

DOA's character popularity is weird. It's not necessarily beginner-friendly characters people gravitate towards or top-tier characters. They tend to go first with which set of tits they like best, and after that, its whoever they think is badass. Vast majority of people seem to think Ayane fits both of those requirements, and she's free, so the result is infinite Ayanes, lol

I guess that's it.

My bad I was talking about in tournament level play not online lmao. Ayane is pretty popular online. And you pretty much summed up what I meant Brute when I put her as the most difficult NInja to play.

In tournament play none of the ninjas are very popular, honestly. At least in the West. Kasumi and Momiji would be the most so, but even then they're on the lesser end.

I'm not gonna piss anyone off by rating the ninjas, but Ayane is a difficult one to master, imo.

Lol that is true if you are talking about ninjas that place well. I can name 2 dedicated Hayabusas I've seen offline including you, around 4-5 Kasumi players, 2 dedicated Ayane players and no dedicated Hayates. Poor Hayate lol.

Instead hes everybodys pocket Ninja lol.

There's also no Ein tourney goers either. not unless Offbeat goes to one of the majors.

Also thanks for the 20+ notifications xD

Also Lmao at "They tend to go first with which set of tits they like best and after that its whoever they think is badass." That's so true. Myself for example starting this game out chose between Kasumi, Hitomi and Kokoro to start off because they are my favorite females. Then I started with Kasumi and saw Hayate.