Wrong, you should really only launch when Abel’s low on life, the current opponent’s character is a bad matchup (like Zangief) or it’ll lead into a certain death combo. Abel is all about maintaining the pressure, so every hit should result in another mixup the opponent fears. I always link into cr.MP xx CoD or s.MP chained into cr.HK. Both options keep the pressure on and continues to put your opponent in a position where they can potentially guess wrong.
Except you aren’t giving up a little bit if damage, you are trading almost half the available damage.
Okay, so you mix them up into another combo, great, you just accomplished exactly what you would have had you just finished the combo in the first place.
You are also ignoring a litany of other things that go on in that situation. You other character can also have mixups, you can tag Abel back in, the opponent can get out of your “reset”, a knockdown is better than those situations you just mentioned.
I’m not saying always boost always, but off a good deal if the hits Abel will get, it’s the best option.
s.MP chained into cr.HK is a hard knockdown, that’s what makes it scary. You’re thinking of a short-term benefit, like 50-60 damage more off an immediate combo that puts in another character and most likely resets the oki game. If you had just kept Abel in with a sweep, the next setup could result in anything, depending on how the opponent responds. And you’d ideally want to be able to whiff punish with s.MK -> s.HP xx tag punish. Point is, trading a little bit of extra damage for great positioning and the threat of another mixup or even Abel’s huge tag combo is worth it in the metagame of this IMO.
Off a confirmed CoD combo with Abel, I’m usually getting around 240 damage, which is a sizable amount with the knockdown I get.
If I tag out, I’m getting anywhere from 300 to 360, and this is off like 3 light confirms. I can get 120 more damage, and I didn’t eliminate oki or anything in the process. I get what you’re saying, because oki is still Abel’s fucking job, so it’s difficult to find a character that can do it better (especially with throws catching roll now.)
But when you’re giving up 120 on a gamble, and it is, it’s silly to say you usually want to go for the gamble. My determinant to keeping Abel in is always, do I have a solid chunk of meter to make him truly scary?
Well, let me rephrase myself. You shouldn’t launch the instant you get a hit in, but wait for a better chance to capitalize (launch off overhead HK, when it’ll lead into a corner combo, when s.LK is the only way to punish, etc.). I usually always have a meter with Abel, since EX TT or tackle shouldn’t be something you throw around as soon as you get a bar. I do prefer going for the gamble, since my options on wakeup are quite numerous. I’m not only going for only one certain mixup, I can do a variety of things. And it can lead into a variety of things. Anyway, I know people prefer playing this as a heavy tag-out game, but I feel that Abel is a sufficient threat alone to most of the cast already. You can launch, but why launch when you can hurt them a little more and then launch for a kill/almost death combo? That’s just my individual philosophy.
So on tag-in, I’ve been going to cl.Hp xx lk wheel kick, forward kick xx dash, cl.HP xx HP falling sky. The problem is the Cl.HP after the dash cancelled forward kick is seeming pretty finicky for me. I’m getting about a 50% rate on this in matches, slightly higher in training, maybe 60%. A lot of time it will look/feel exactly the same as a successful one, but my HP swing will pass right through them. It almost looks like I’m out of juggle points, because it looks like it should be hitting, but if it works sometimes then obviously I can’ t be out of juggle.
Anyone have any tricks/tips or videos on the timing? I’m thinking maybe it might be the height of the bounce when I connect with the step kick? I’ve been trying different timings but haven’t gotten anything consistent yet. Thanks, y’all.
It’s not a good strategy because you need to succeed in two mixups to get the same benefit as one.
If the damaged sacrificed wasn’t so great it makes more sense. Like ending a Hwo combo with hunting hawk rather than his new dynamite kick>DP. The latter does only marginally more damage so going for the awesome HH KD is better.
lol I play Jin and Abel as well. I’ve mained Jin since ‘vanilla’ sfxt and it’s annoying now to play people and be called a tier whore, cause apparently abel is ‘top tier’ now. Doesn’t even matter that I played jin before and I play abel in AE.
Anyways, yeah, I basically do any hit-confirm I get into tag launch, whether it is step kick, cl.hp or a cr.lk,cr.lp,cr.mp hitconfirm. With Abel not having any amazing oki setups anymore, not to mention rolls, I feel the guaranteed tag damage is more worth it. Of course this excludes when my tagged out character has low hp or lots of recoverable health.
Idk if abel is even top tier. I think he was good in the old version, I think he’s much better now, but abel without meter is just meh. And his hit confirm combos without meter are meh.
I just want to punish a roll with pandora breathless.
hes medium and heavy shoulder tackle should have armor now right ? Atleast it said so in the capcom video. I tested it in training and it didnt seem to have armor. Whats that about ?
Not sure about MP tackle, but HP tackle has armor just in its active frames. A good deal of that move is start up and recovery, so that might be why you aren’t seeing it.
Shoulder tackle sucks. Yeah, it gets armor WAY late, so it’s not something you can ever do on reaction, and even on prediction its hard as hell to make it useful.
This is not true, Abel could link cr. LP and cr. LK into HP xx rekka in SF4. In SFXT he has even more links, do I’m confused why you say he couldn’t hit confirm before now?
Also, I have one burning question: Why did Capcom say they were changing the shoulder tackle input to activate with K instead of P, but then didn’t actually make that change???
Was that just an oversight, or did they decide not to change it for some reason in particular?
This was in the initial list of changes, but then they decided to change that later. I think you can see that in the list of final balance changes.
Did you not read my whole post? I said he could link those in sf4… but it was situational in that you had to be point-blank and it was very hard to hit-confirm off one jab unless you did it off a jump-in. And the whole point is that he couldn’t do anything meaningful after one jab was blocked, whereas in sfxt if they stop blocking and try to jump after 1-2 light attacks, he can still confirm into combo.
v2013 is really making me feel that -1 stepkick.
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So i’m seeing this but i don’t get it. It says that is mp shoulder tackle, but mp shoulder does knockdown so why are they still standing? does it have different properties depending on when it hits or if it’s cancelled into? And I wonder what the frame data is on hit for that, and if it’s a mixup that basically all the options lose to mashing jabs.
LP and HP tackle knockdown, MP doesn’t knockdown now.
EDIT: I tested and it’s probably 0 or +1 on hit, since I can’t mash jab or reversal Ken super or even gief’s. So yeah it IS safe, but makes me wonder why would you use that instead of the 1st Rekka, since it is +3 on hit.
I see… might as well do a rekka then, especially since it’s easier to hit-confirm since it doesn’t require a cl.hp to combo, and has more advantage anyways. It does about 20 less damage but for something that’s a lot less of a hassle to connect not to mention having an overall better mixup afterwards, i’d say it’s worth it.
Currently doing this as far as combos. If I do a hit-confirm series, aka cr.lk,cr.lp.cr.mp I will do the first rekka and take the mixup after that. The damage difference between that and doing a tag launch combo is not big after the damage scaling. However, off a step kick, I’ll still always do cl.hp tag launch cause with jin that’s a solid 370 damage there.
Another thing I’m implementing is sweep CADC stuff. Now abel could always cancel his sweep even in AE, but you could never cancel it into anything truly safe. Now if you cancel it into shoulder, you can CADC back or forward depending on block or hit. On hit you can get an easy meaty overhead or whatever mixup.
Are there any top players that use Abel in SFxT, who you guys follow?