DIfferent Strokes: Maya & Rail

Been messing with the new patch since its official release and I must say im both disappointed and impressed at the same time. The patch brought forth quite a bit of new suprises for most people. Changed alot of character outlooks and created new possibilities as far as combos and gameplay is concerened. Maya, While once one of the best characters in the game, Took the biggest hit of all the characters in the game. While most changes were thought to be improvements turned out to be horrific changes.

Maya's 236A took a serious hit. Being turned into a different move all together, This move is alot less useless than it used to be. Beforehand, Maya could seriously do some major damage with this move. Now the move is next to useless(outside of being shifted. We will get to that later) She recieved a new j.2c move which at first everyone thought was an overhead. Not even close, The move can be cancelled into an air version of 236a. But the move is so bad as it is, Why even bother with it in the first place???? Its just that shitty. In order for maya to be any sort of a threat to her opponent she has to be shifted now.( much like orju) If maya isnt shifted, then she isnt worth jack shit. Sad but true, Maya has taken a huge leap to the bottom of the barrel.
The worst thing of all is her forward dash. At first, I thought that making her forward dash have more range and giving it more speed would be a good thing considering her old dash was pretty ass already. NEGATIVE! Couldnt have had a bigger mistake. Her forward dash now has even LONGER recovery then it did before. A huge mistake that was made and needs to be fixed. Maya really got the shit end of the stick. Maybe in the next patch, We can hope for actual"improvements"

Now rail didnt really get any new changes, however There seems to be alot of people jumping on the rail train. Xiii, Xaqshinor(who already played rail) and Turbovec have all decided to jump on the Rail train. Rail seems rather random. I have been considering taking him up as a second main character but I am starting to notice rails bad matchups. Othello, Siely Katze, and Orju REALLY give rail headaches. Learning to properly use rail is pretty hard considering his spirit ends up in random places at random times. Rail reminds me of Testament from Guilty gear. When the skull hits you and the crow is attacking you have to constantly be paying attention to the pattern that was used at that point in time to know where the next hit will be. It is very similar with rail in that respect. While most rail players tend to run away, Jump around doing random nonsense. The ONLY Rail player(other than fooligar who isnt a rail player) Who is using Rail the way that I believe he should be played is Xiii. Using the Tranquility shift for Rail is hard in that of itself. Xiii is learning to attack and Use rails spirit as defense. Xaqshinor has a decent rail in his own right. But he gets caught in patterns. Xiii does too but he is learning around those. I play Freedom Rail. Freedom rails range and speed on alot of moves arent the same as Monster rail and Tranquility rail. So I am starting to think that Freedom rail is the weaker link out of the Rail group.

Hoping that the mistakes of this patch will be seen, Maybe maya will get some legit changes in the next patch that wont hurt her too much anymore, because now. Using her is next to useless in all respects.