Ok i’ve been testing out some ideas in training and I think i’ve found some interesting stuff, i’ll try to explain best I can (big post):
I was thinking of uses for Ex Mortar because it is safe on block and causes a groundbounce when it hits. Safe and follow up combos/tag combos when it hits… fantastic.
So I began playing around with Chains and I found a lot of his Ex Moves that seem kind of crap in mid battle like Ex Mortar, Ex Sway actually seem useful when used in conjunction with chains.
I’ll begin by using this chain as an example: St Lp ~ Cr Mk ~ Cs Hp. An example of a time you might use this chain in a match… Blocked Jump Mk Crossup > Cs Mp (or a slight delay to avoid reversals), Delayed St Lp ~ Cr Mk ~ Cs Hp, a fairly standard frame trap approach.
If this frame trap chain hits you can go into an Ex PS for a wallbounce into big combo/tag combo. If it is blocked Ex Mortar is one option. I did some quick testing (emphasis on the quick) and this seems like a nifty little trap. If you try to jump between the end of the chain and Ex Mortar starting you will get hit and if you stick out normals to punish the chain this will most likely beat it and cause a groundbounce for a follow up combo! This can get beat by reversals but you have more options for this situation.
If you use Ex Sway at the end of this chain in my tests on Ryu’s Srk only Ex (with pretty strict timing) will beat it out although Supers and Cross Assaults seem to own it (there is an option vs these though later). So it seems Ex Sway may beat a lot of reversals from this chain but I need to test it more to confirm. Ex Sway from this setup also seems to eat NJ’s alive and hits back jumps or forces them to block (fwd jump will escape the Ex Sway but it looks like you will have recovered in time to avoid being punished). You also get to follow up with a BIG combo if this hits!
You also have his Ex Dash Cancel, which seems fairly hard to distinguish between Ex Mortar and Sway in the heat of moment but it is very unsafe in this setup (and we all know how slow Paul’s dash recovers so using it in offence is a big risk).
Interestingly I found if you change the chain I gave as an example slightly to St Lp ~ Cr Mk ~ Cs Hk (instead of Cs Hp) Ex Sway Beats a lot more reversals including a some maybe a lot of Super’s/Cross Assaults (I only tested a few, Chun Li, Ryu, Kazuya, Paul) Ryu’s Ex Srk Chun’s Ex SBK to name a few more reversals that don’t punish this. However Ex Sway is a lot more vulnerable to jumps in this chain.
Ex Mortar completely whiffs in this chain however His Ex Backdash Cancel seems hella safe compared to the previous chain. Some characters may be able to punish this but away from the corner Ex Backdash seems very safe from this chain and may be a good way to bait out reversals.
I feel that in the heat of the moment and if you are being creative with your blockstrings it will be hard to distinguish slightly different chains (ending in a Cs Hk instead of Cs Hp) which give your Ex moves different priorities in moves that they are safe against/beat and Also tough to tell apart Ex moves and be able to react (have to guess).
Also you can cancel into an Ex at any point in a chain so you can really cause your opponent problems for example: in the first chain St Lp ~ Cr Mk ~ Cs Hp your opponent has to block normal/low/normal so if they block that chain you can mix it up next time by doing St Lp into Ex Mortar so they suddenly have to block high instead of low (it seems fast and difficult to react to).
So to wrap this post up I feel these chain tricks with some creativity and meter (meter gems ftw) can make Paul’s pressure and blockstrings a lot harder to deal with. I’m sorry if this is common knowledge but I haven’t seen it discussed so I thought I would share it with you guys. If I have done a bad job explaining and you would like to see a video I can do that also.