A few points:

1. You don't need reserve seal or whatever for GNW Tenten team, just run with healing standard and enhancement of water ninja.

2. Healing tips stack with one another, meaning that Tsunade[5th hokage] just boosts it ever further (40% + 45%, legit).

3. Poison is too easy to apply as Azure Fang, and it's not limited to that ninja only, meaning that if the enemy can't clear debuffs, they will have 4 stacks on them from turn 1.

4. Standard attacks pack way too much utility: a heal that clears all debuffs / acupuncture + knockdown / high float + high damage + damage to self making her super good in all fronts with no clear weakness.

5. Passives are overloaded, you can run both healing tips and poison at the same time or if you feel like you have enough healing you can just make your critical hits cause chaos.

6. Highest raw stats our of all main characters by far, she can tank as well as earth main, provide support and healing, deal good damage and all that while having more HP and defenses to work with.

7. Kakashi is by far one of the most useless characters in this game, rocking a pitiful stat line, terrible mystery (single target, causes low float, based on taijutsu with low damage), chases are "OK" (low damage on both, status effects are nice but they're single target), one of the weakest clones in the game (which he can't recreate after it's killed) and skill breaks make his mystery somewhat comparable to Suigetsu's, which shows you how good it is.

8. Ninja power distribution seems very dumb in general, after looking at growth stats, Iruka has better stats than 90% of ninja if not all, now while the game does not have to be accurate compared to the anime or whatever, a bit of thought would have been nice. I got Yagura the other day, upgraded him just to see how his stats go, and to my surprise his stats are probably the worst I've seen so far in this game, his only decent stat being resistance, which he does not use in combat in any way (shields for example). So he's basically set to be a support, and a lousy one at that considering the only things he brings to the table are a bit of chakra each round and the ability to create a weak clone of one enemy ninja (which is nice but usually not practical for anything but stealing barriers or getting some buffs.

So if the enemy has more power than you, would you run any team other than a variation of the immortal water main team? The fact that a main character can bridge a 10-30k BP difference is absurd. You can go on about counters and so on, truth is, if you can't kill them in 1 combo, you will probably lose to poison. I don't think that there is any other 1 class that requires you to build a team specifically to counter is, the bane of lightning armor blitz is a ninja that can dodge or any ninja that can actually survive the initial combo, and immortal teams have those sort of ninja with either Roshi / Naruto[tailed beast] etc.

As for buffing Earth / Wind, I have no problem with that, but the biggest issue still remains the sheer power and statistical advantage of Azure Fang over other mains.

[*] Why does Azure Fang have better overall defensive stats than a ninja that's intended to be a tank?

If you make the argument that it's a support than give her the stats of a support, an Azure Fang should not be able to take as much punishment as a tank just to heal it back up.

[*] why does Azure Fang's poison stack when her own ninja attack?

Poison stacks up to 4 times, while playing Azure Fang you c*most 100% of the time get 4 poison stacks on at least 1 enemy after the first round, from there it's a ticking time bomb, the fact that you can casually apply a strong status effect with the greatest of ease with any attack / chase seems dumb to me, I'm sorry.

[*] Why does Azure Fang's heal remove all debuffs?

It's a 0 cost mystery that heals a good chunk and removes all debuffs, you can call me crazy but that's a bit too much. While Scarlet Blaze has access to a shield that also makes his team immune for the turn, Azure Fang has a stacking healing tips passive, a weak shield is nothing compared to a juicy boosted heal. I don't mind her having heals, nor am I upset with her having good utility through debuff clearing or CC, the fact that you don't need to make a choice and you can basically just eat the cake and leave it whole is a bit too much.

I'm play Crimson Fist / Breeze Dancer for the most part, and I don't mind facing anyone, since for me it's a challenge, but failing to see that something's not right on the balance side of things, you're basically lying to yourself. You can go on and say that other classes will rise, but for the most part they're easy to take on compare to Azure Fang.

You know, some people actually play games for fun, but how would you know? you're one of those who participate in WATER time battles.

I enjoy coming up with strategies and teams, I do change my teams on a weekly basis, trying ninja out etc., I could be going for cheap wins with water, but what's the point?

I can tell you for a fact that among out top 10 in server we have :

3x Water main

2x Fire main

2x Wind main

2x Earth main

1x Lightning main

As you can see, there are more water mains than anything else. You want facts? then here we go

1. Water main has the best stat line out of all mains by far, beating earth in defensive stats (more HP, slightly lower defense, much higher resistance), ninjutsu is almost as high as wind main's and attack comparable to both earth and lightning.

2. Positioning of passives makes it so you have a lot of utility with no real drawback, water main is overloaded as a result, you get huge healing with a tanky stat line and good control to go along with poison DoT which can be applied by anyone on your team (a pretty good deal I must say).

3. The only counter to those high end immortal teams is killing them on the first few turns, and to that I say, good luck! Sakura[Sailor Uniform] is beefy, with healing whenever she takes damage, passive heal to go along with he standard attacks and a prompt team heal that removes all debuffs. Now add healing tips on top of that (45% from Tsunade[5th hokage] + 40% from Azure Fang), so at this point you have 3 healers, 95% boost to healing, AoE poison that's applied each turn, and damaging Sakura heas her. So you might be thinking, bring ignites! well that's true that ignite cancels healing but do remember that healing also cancels ignites, and with 3 healers, 2 of which have prompt full team heals that clears all debuffs, and good luck trying to kill them in 1~2 turns.

You can argue as much as you want, water is too dominant even when facing higher power opponents in most cases you squeeze a win, and it has nothing to do with you outplaying your opponent by any means, it's the fact that the opponent can't disable 3 ninja every turn while also keeping himself clear of poison, and possibly ignites if he runs Roshi / Naruto etc.

I would love to know what's your BP, I don't see how a team with Midnight Blade, Sasuke, Guy and Hinata / Kabuto can wipe out an immortal team, unless you're running just random 3 healers and no proper front line. Consider how little people actually devote to actually coming up with strategies in this game I will no be surprised if you just setup your team the wrong way.

Regard the Mei / Tenten team, it's good at lower power levels, as Mei packs a lot of damage and a strong barrier. In the end of the day, this team will not be able to outlast an immortal team due to healers / debuff clears, also consider the fact that the immortal team usually has no more than 2 male ninja which means that Mei won't be doing as much damage as she would against Midnight Blade teams (which are mostly male).

Here is a video showing you how a smart player exploits Azure Fang, defeating a player with 34k BP difference, now there should not be a case in which a player that has almost 50% more BP than you at that level would lose to you, even on auto battle.

Now tell me that you can do anything that remotely resembles this with any other class.

Read what he said, when it comes to raw growth stats, Azure Fang rivals Crimson fist. This tread has nothing to do with a specific player he had trouble defeating, it's the overall power that Azure Fang has at her disposal, and the fact that she does not have to make a choice between 2 good skill, but rather take them all, unlike wind for example which has some sub par passives compared to other classes.

I don't know if you ever noticed but having Crimson fist as a main tank is inferior to having an actual tank and having Crimson Fist as a shield bot. The current changes to his passives support this play style too, which is highly effective. The he is using is quite good actually, being able to take on people within ~7k BP range of him, so as I said above this is not a rant about a specific opponent he had but on the state of the game in general.

As stated before, this thread isn't a rant about specific hard match ups or anything of the sort, but rather something that's been happening in the higher levels of play, I run Crimson Fist for a while now, and while I do have weak match ups, I'm generally satisfied with the teams I'm running, and I don't mind facing Azure Fang players because they generally don't put any thought into their matches. Saying Azure Fang does not have an edge over other classes is straight out lying as demonstrated in earlier replies.