Ryo Stage 2

[subtleagent]

Honestly seeing his run, I legit thought he was going to bite it on the Rolling Log. But yeah you can see where he was kind of laboring. He still looked pretty shaken up after the log so he likely would have timed out had the log not been shortened. 

[dakohosu]

Still a vast improvement from last time, you could tell he trained for the Log+Salmon Ladder combo. Last time he just went straight into the Salmon Ladder and clearly the dizziness affected his judgment. This time I was surprised in that he rushed into the obstacle again (as shown by him nearly losing his footing) but he clearly acclimatised to the dizziness through training.

I get the impression that prior to 38 most competitors thought the log would be easy but then the results of 38's Stage 2 provided a bit of a reality check, hence why I felt like a lot of the competitors were way more prepared for the combo this time round, combined with the fact that the obstacle was now slightly nerfed.

[subtleagent]

True, Saikawa and Kajihara did and they both made it further than their previous marks.

Ryo's adopted a strategy to rush the first several obstacles to give him time to recover for obstacles he's weak against (Tackle, Backstream + Wall Lift). That strategy doesn't seem very effective following something like the Rolling Log and that's where I feel the stage would have done him in had the nerf not been in effect. But yeah, he definitely did a lot better than 38 and he's not quite a write off like Nagasaki or Kanno anymore.

[azn]

Hopefully when he does use that strategy, he get's more clears instead of SK37 like situations.