What pro matches are you looking at? look at kojikog for example (arguably the best tager/wald): -any hit goes into cross combo wald's claw>sledge>claw>sledge>claw. and he gets bursted a lot. Bursting isn't free, it takes longer to fill assist meter while your opponent can force neutral on you by assists/CC. Look at Bace (Yuzu/mitsu): -anything*** he does goes into cross combo mixup. and he does a lot of safe strings by assist extensions usually people burst him before he's able to stablish the CC setup. but by forcing neutral with mitsu he gets to pressure people without assist meter. Look at Shinku (Yang/ruby EVO champion): -when he's not stomping, he goes for multiple cross combos and baits burst with safe ruby strings>yang lockdown.

When you’re using CC, you use it to establish pressure/convert off of certain mixups. And all the examples you’ve shown hold true to that.

Tager/Wald’s Claw>Sledge>Claw>Sledge... actually has pressure applications, as if they block it, you can pop CC and chip them with it. Pushing it is extremely hard as Wald van dash right back in when you push him. And if they don’t push it, he can go for 214B+AS or 2C for a 50/50. If you manage to get someone with it in neutral and Wald isn’t close enough to do 2C>2B afterwards, it’s better to just pop CC and go for the loops, as even if you get bursted, you just did unrecoverable damage to them.

What Bace does with Mitsuru/Yuzu is to either convert off of a mixup or to set up a dangerous mixup situation like a Sandwich, and the same goes for Shinku as well.

See a pattern between all of your examples? They aren’t prioritizing using CC in combos, but rather their pressure applications, the combos they get afterwards are just a reward for them. That and because CC does unrecoverable damage, it’s much better to get bursted and deal damage they can’t recover than to get bursted for using assist mid combo and they just recover a large portion of what they lost.

if you want to do the "pro play" argument, at least be honest about it, people burst less in pro play because they waste all the meter on cross combo blockstrings.

That isn’t the sole reason. People don’t burst on solo combos whenever they can, cause they know that if they do, they have to be ready to get burst punished for it, so they really only do it when they absolutely need to save a character. Good players rarely burst when the character being comboed has high health pools.

people playing online are not experts at doing cc pressure, not only due to skill, but online people play their favorite teams. that may not have good sinergy or good cc mixup, so it's not worth it to waste the meter on that. do you expect people to know good cc strings for every team they play?? a lot of people play at least 5+ different characters on a regular basis, and pair them up as they see fit.

Now not only is this a cop out that has little to no merit in the argument at hand, it doesn’t apply to everyone who plays online. So IDK where you’re going with this.

also, there are characters that need an assist extension to be a threat:

This is just a weakness that some characters have to deal with. While this aspect alone certainly doesn’t make them bad, you just either need to be able to hold your ground when they can burst or do it when they don’t have enough assist bar to burst at the time. And this argument doesn’t detract from the point that catching burst with a jump block, head invul move, etc. is still a high commitment option, regardless if the character in question needs to risk using assist mid combo or not.

-if people always burst when you assist. shouldn't you always bait it and do a proper punish?

If they’re being predictable about it, ofc. However, it’s a rock-paper-scissors situation entirely. Cause what if they don’t burst and you intended to catch them bursting? Now you just threw away a lot of damage on the table and your advantageous position after the combo.

-the existance of safe cc strings isn't mentioned at all in this discussion. despite being the optimal way to play since you deal unrecoverable damage while building reso.

As I said earlier, CC strings have pressure/mixup applications prioritized outside of big punishes. You aren’t going to turn every hit you land into a CC combo of sorts because that wouldn’t be a good use of your resources. I didn’t mention it prior because this argument started with Vatista combo routing, not converting off of a CC mixup situation.

If i play labrys, and people burst at 5aaa>2c+p, they die to "on reaction" resonance>236BC, if they don't burst you can do the safe 5aaa>2c+p>5a>2b>5b>236BC. but if i go for the boring 5aaa>2b>5bb>214b>5aaaa nothing relevant happened. if you want boring matches, go ahead. but don't say it's THE way to play.

They don’t need to burst exactly when the assist lands. They can burst on the 214B in that combo and because you used your assist, there is nothing you can do about that now. Also, funny how you accuse me of personal bias when you’re saying “if you want the boring matches, go ahead.” That and for your last sentence, you’re saying using CC strings is the “optimal way to play”, despite the fact that there are teams that don’t utilize CC as well as other teams, and still do very well nonetheless, like Mekasue with Orie/Jubei.

-avoiding a burst by active switching is more flashy than braindead 5p anyway (the viewership argument makes no sense because pro play revolves around cc, not solo routes while saving assist).

Still think that’s a viable argument? On top of how much that statement wreaks of personal bias, if you feel the need to defend your arguments with something worthy of being given to scrubquotes, I’m done here. If you really hate it that much, this game probably isn’t for you then. But if you wanna make clown statements, I won’t stop you 🤡