I probably won't get to go to Evo because it turns out my wife is 10 weeks pregnant.
Congratulations, Karsticles! Best wishes to you and your family.
So yesterday was my birthday and I ended up getting a GC controller and a copy of Melee because of it :x)
Belated Happy Birthday, AnneIFrank. I wish I got cool games-related gifts for my birthday :<
On other stuff, I read through Pat Miller's SF Howto ebook to see if I can recommend it and all I can say is that damn, that thing is good.
I second this recommendation, it's a great short read that will give you like a 3x boost to xp gain for free!
I think your familiarity and understanding of the old dumb is diminishing your judgement of it relative to the new dumb. To my new eyes, he's actually been of the more straightforward to understand characters in the cast. Meanwhile Zato is still poking me in the butt with his unblockables, and his dog is jumping at me from all sorts of places, like wtf (unblockable pokes in the butt are hardly elegant, man). I agree with your idea for the character and moveset design if the context were different (and more sane).
(Also you're overselling the uniqueness and depth of his moveset.)
I wouldn't say he's this game's El Fuerte though, that's Slayer(god help us all with his buffs). Leo is a bit on the slow side so you get to dance around him a bit, until the first touch, then it's the carnival of stupid.
I love this description because it's how I see Guilty Gear: a carnival of stupid that somehow holds together and ends being a really good show