Tried party battle quickly and ended up playing for about an hour, really fun and I like how they arranged it so players and player orders are constantly shuffled. Gave me flashbacks to playing 2002 party battles on winkawaks/mame back in the day.
The play wasn't smooth but playable, which was surprising considering four of us had 1 bar connections (myself included) and two had 4-5 bars. I was able to pull off the Zarina EX combo I was practicing quite a few times, even more satisfying knowing that 5 other people were watching hehe. The Ramon player was going all El Rosa on people's asses and doing them combos (luckily I was on his team every time).
It does seem to be on a connection basis per character/player because against one particular player (and only him) the game almost froze on round start up and then played on but the match with him was pretty laggy. After I took him out it became better again when the next player's character jumped in.
Did decently with Zarina but was of course just completely confuzled with her game plan and her jump feels extra floaty. Eventually switched to Terry and did a reverse OCV for the team, landed lots of super cancel combos and an advanced cancel.
Considering how bad our connections were to each other it was decently playable and we were all doing max combos too.
Her V-slasher lost invincibility unless you use 2 meters so you can't scumbag with that move like in previous games. I think anchor Leona is going to be great. Just pop max mode and throw bakudans and just go in. They can try to run under it since she throws it high, but grand sabre can keep them in check and you should be safe if they block it. Bakudans also put them in a juggle state, so whenever one lands you can always do something, of course unless they get hit by it full screen away from you but that only happens if they screwed up or something. Though bakudans against Choi you have to be careful, since he is a midget it probably will miss him even if he is standing still.
Yeah it got nerfed but the same is true for other characters as well, many have lost invincibility on regular and EX supers. I'm guessing it's to balance being able to advanced cancel and max cancel outside of max activation. Leona in particular benefits heavily from these, especially when combined with the bomb pressure etc. like you mentioned.
