Brazilian Tier List.
Chang is high tier.
If you can do specials and supers then you're good to go. XIV allows you to combo in many ways so you can pick what's comfortable for you. You can completely ignore max mode combos if you like and still do really good damage.
Super cancels are just canceling a special move into super. In XIV there is no extra meter cost to super canceling. It costs 1 meter total to cancel a special move into a regular super move. Special moves can be super canceled into regular supers, EX supers and Climax supers.
Advanced cancels are canceling a regular super move into an EX (level 2) super move. This costs 3 meters in total.
Climax cancels are canceling a regular or EX super move into a Climax super move. Costs 4 and 5 meters respectively.
The important thing to keep in mind about canceling is the game's input buffer (aka the hold button trick). Basically if you do a special move or a super move and hold the attack button down after doing it then the game keeps it in memory for a short while and will do the move the first chance it gets. This way you don't have to be precise with your input but can actually do it quite a bit earlier than required and still get your special move, super etc. to come out. This is a huge help in combos and super cancels and makes timing overall very lenient.
All three of your characters have easy super cancel combos that will do great damage and can be buffered by carrying motions over.
For example with Ryo:
- standing (or crouching) HP, QCF+LP, ranbu or fireball super
This is a basic but very useful combo (my most used with him). You hit confirm off of HP and the fireball and then just complete the motion to get either super. For the ranbu super just do QCB+P after the fireball (since you already did the QCF+P when doing the fireball and don't need to repeat that motion) and for the fireball super do HCF+P (since you already hit forward when doing the fireball).
What you are doing is dividing the motions between the special and the supers, which means you don't need to do the entire motion for the super. So your motion for the combo will look like this:
- standing (or crouching) HP, QCF+LP (fireball), QCB+P (to super cancel into the ranbu super)
The above combo will do over 30% damage with regular super and about 45% if you use an EX super.
To turn that into an Advanced cancel combo just cancel the regular super into an EX super. Doing the combo with a regular fireball super and canceling it into an EX ranbu super (just do the regular fireball super and then immediately do the EX ranbu and hold both punches). This will give you about 65% damage. You can utilize Climax cancels the same way in the combo.
The same applies to Andy and Kim. With Kim do standing HP or HK into QCB+HK and then do a super of your choice. For Andy do standing HP (add his forward+LP command normal if you like) into his elbow move into the fireball super (so for the elbow move do HCF+HP and then just to QCB+P do get the super cancel, since his elbow and super motions overlap).