This guide is here to bring to light some of painwheels overlooked strengths.
Even though i’d like to, i wont bore you guys with theory. Here are the options as i see them, that i feel are really needed to take your painwheel game to the next level. Ill list her weaknesses in neutral and what we can do to combat thise weaknesses:
Her air to air priority is sorely lacking. It may even be the worst air to a
Air priority in the game.
She is highly susceptible to pushblock when using her standard opener
Outside of her level 3, her fireball game is nearly useless.
Her super isnt the greatest reversal in the world and out side of it she has no invincible moves to get the opponent off of her once they are in… She has to block and pushblock very well, and get lucky or use an invincible/ high priority assist.
Ok, so how do we deal with her shit air priority… Other than playing a streetfighter style type of game where she tries to make the opponent wiff so that she can use thatto her advantage, she has one very good way of dealing with air to air cheese:
Charged j.hp. Now i know that many players think this move is shit, i was once of the same opinion. However after having been using it more and more in my own game ive become a huge fan. The thing to know about this move is that it isnt an “attacking move” in the most classical sense… If it were, it would be beyond broken. As it is it is just mostly a way to advance against the opponent even if they are using moves to keep you out or if they are using high priority moves to try and get in. It simply gets painwheel passed the bullshit. And thats how it should be used, you dont necessarily need it to hit your opponent, you just need to get passed there air to air or there ground to air, remember that painwheel can call and assist at ANYTIME this move is out, and since she can do that plus she usually passes up characters over there head when using this move… She actually inadvertently creates an assist crossup situation if she called her assist with the correct timing. And the assist will actually hit the point character towards painwheel.
Also, charged j.hp has RIDICULOUS priority once it is out. So when we put these things together, it isnt a move that you use to try and make any one certain thing happen, its a move that you use and after its done you figure out whats happened as there are many things that can happen when using this move… You can crossup the opponent and your assist call will crossup there point character and happy birthday there own assist, you can land right next to your opponent, behind them. Instead you might actually hit the point character and be able to hitconfirm into a combo. This move is random at its finest and thats how it should be used… A chaos generator if you will and its better for painwheel than the opponent since she will know when shes using it and knows when to look for the chaos and what to do when it happens.
Ahem… Hope i didnt lose you guys there.
Ok so
BLOCKSTRINGS:
Painwheels standard blockstring is cr.lk,cr.mk,st.hp xx flight
Its incredibly easy to pushblock, its also a really good hitconfirm.
But its weakness to pushblocking is where it fails. Painwheel doenst have the easiest time getting in though charged j.hp makes her life much easier. But after doing all that work to get in, just to get pushblocked out is frustrating to deal with. So i came up with some anti pushblock strings… Note that these strings arent , they just have different pushblock timings and thusly allow painwheel to molest her opponent almost to her hearts content. First, for those that dont know, sg pushblock isnt like marvels, the primary differences are that sg pushblock doesnt push as far back and that sg pushblock is not spammable and that only the last hit of any multihit move can be pushblocked…
In laymens terms this means that if your opponent wanted to pushblock the st.hp in the aforemrntioned string he would have to wait until it made contact then pushblock it… But he’d generally be anticipating the timing, ie guessing the third hit will be a one move attack. This is where we isntead use painwheels multihit F+hk multihit… Cause if the opponent pushblocks the first hit it will have no effect cause f+ hk is a multihit move and can only be pushblocked on either the final hit or the last hit.
So thats one way around people that like to predictably pushblock the st.hp… You use f+ hk instead. But what if they just pushblock the 2nd hit in your string before the hk even makes contact? Ah yes… Painwheel also has a medium that is a multihit as well that also can only be pushblocked on the final hit. So now painwheel can do cr.lk,cr.mp, f+hk for a very hard to pushblock string. Note also that since its always the final hit that painwheel can actually control which hit of her multihits is actually pushblockable, and at the very least she has a pushblock mixup on doing cr.mk (needs to be pushblocked early) or cr.mp( needs to be pushblocked late) and the same exact mixup when selecting between st.hp or f+hk.
Ok so what if the opponent says fuck that noise im going to pushblock the first hit… To hell with dealing with that antipushblock nonsense? Well pushblocking the first hit in any string is always a guess, the opponent is commiting to a guess. The marvel thing to do would be to frame trap the pushblock or assist trap it… But this is sg, we dont have to get that in depth. We can simply jump in with a hk then flight cancel that into another jumping hk and beat there pushblock/crouch block attempt.
I guess that technically is a frame trap… Whatever.
Well what if our opponent sees all that and says… I aint dealing with that noise, im just going to pushblock the jump attack, fuck figuring this bitch out? Well we can jump in simultaneously with our assist… Now they cant pushblock us, also we can empty jump with our invulnerable assist. And finally we can can flight cancel the jump attack and then hover back into attack range without skipping a beat. So now we have an option for every timing of pushblock against our offense.
Personally i use the flight cancel and the f+hk variants as those are the pushblocks that i encounter the most against my pw. They are super powerful if you can achieve the correct position.
Hitconfirms: there are many hitconfirms with pw but there are a couple i think take the cake:
St.lp, cr.lk,cr.mk,st.hp
Dacidbros newest hitconfirm, its very good for insuring that you either get blocked or hit your opponent rather than getting hit yourself, the problem with this hitconfirm is its pushblock fodder and it is also kinda on the lower end of the damage scale as far as starters go. Still i think its the second best starter.
Cr.lk,cr.mk,st.hp
The hitconfirm of the masses. Most everyone use this. It is also very susceptible to pushblock and that is its primary weakness. This is my old confirm.
Cr.lk, cr.mk,cr.hp
Execution nuts hitconfirm… Its even worse than the above confirm, though its SO MUCH better on hit. A very high damage hitconfirm. Sucks against pushblock like all the above though.
Cr.lk,cr.mk,F+hk (4) the best overall hitconfirm, leads to almost the same exact amount of damage as the everyman hitconfirm, and better against pushblock. This is the hitconfirm that ive been using. As bonus this can be canceled into on hit into flight f+mk to hit the opponent before they touch the ground, and a ridiculously cheap tactic, you can on block do f+mk + lockdown assist for a near free 2nd unpushblockable attempt at a low/throw mixup.
Cr.lk,cr.mp,f+hk
The same as the above except even better aginst pushblock, though it scales combos heavily.
And last but not least ive also been switching up my combos as of late… The going thinking was to save her otg for the end of her combos… But when painwheel is so reset based, 7 times out of 10 you wont need the otg anyway… So that let me go ahead and use her otg towards the beginning of my combos for up to 1000 extra damage before my reste with nothing lost, also it has given me waaaaay more damage off of ground throws as my starter is no longer throw flight cancel uf +lp,lk… Its now throw, flight cancel,f+mk (wiffs just used to move forward) cr.mk,st.hp xx flight f+mk etc.
Does alot more damge.
I took that thinking into my cr.fp combos and instead i let them hit the ground after the first cr.fp and then i otg with cr.mk,st.hp. This is also a low execution way to boost painwheels combo damage if you arent good with the cr.fp midair flight cancel variations.
Feel free to chime in and add stuff as always
-dime