I’m excited, I can finally drop my Rolento/Rufus team. I wanted to play the cheapest and strongest team possible to get some early wins during the launch tournaments with the least amount of effort possible while I worked on the characters that I actually wanted to play on the side, so now that the initial wave is over I can nestle back into my comfort zone a bit, haha.
Nina/Lili is where it’s at! Lili in particular has so much combo potential that it’s astounding, she just takes some getting used to with her normals. And she’s got a NOPE anti-air kick into a 375 damage combo! Whoo. Nina is fun, but I’m not sure why people are saying she’s top tier material. She’s definitely really good and hits like a truck, but her strengths feel like they’re still outmatched and then some by characters like Gief and Rolento. Like, her normals are some of the better ones in the game, but up against characters with the best normals in the game (Or even really good ones like Jin and Ryu), the positives of playing her are marginalized since other than the strong normals and decent jab pressure, she’s not anything special. Dunno, I obviously haven’t gotten too deep into it yet, here’s hoping that something will change my mind.
Hopefully playing these higher execution characters will pay off like playing Zero did. I remember seeing what Zero could do on Day 1 and stuck with him since then, and I’m getting the same feeling about Lili.
I’ve picked up Lili lately too. I think she’ll be really strong; even if she’s not perfect (who is?), her safe pressure is almost unmatched and she has pretty respectable damage off of almost any poke. Couple that with her counter and her godlike AA and I find that she’s pretty solid. I’m pairing her with Hwoarang right now and it seems like a pretty strong combo.
If we want to use “well, she’s not Kazuya or Ryu, so I might as well just play Kazuya and Ryu,” as a reason to not pick someone, this game will be reduced to three characters before the game’s even been out a week.
See’s a scary character up close (Nina) and with one bar stocked the opponent isn’t safe even at a distance considering she has a low move that goes 3/4 screen that they have to look out for (EX even ground bounces for 300 damage combo). You have to use the intimidation of those facts, once they get hit by that move they’ll always be scared of you and this allows you to move closer easier, which is where Nina wants to be. With that said, she really needs to be paired up with zoing character to handle match ups like rolento. Ryu is a good choice or Chun. These characters will wear down the opponents life and if your opponent gets touched, you can tag nina in for big damage and then tag her right back out and continue with your zoing or keep her in and work that amazing up close pressure game (one of the best in the game IMO). Its cheap but very effective.
its -5 , but unless they are looking for it you usually get the WTF? reaction and people don’t punish you in time. I usually just watch when they start the footsie shimmy before throwing it out. Almost no one has the reaction to block it anyway if you use it sparingly. But again you just have to hit them once or twice and they’ll start respecting it or trying to jump at you (which if you counter hit cr.HP anti-air its big damage).
Hah, okay. I think there’s some merit to that but because it’s so unsafe, it can quickly turn from a read to a gimmick. A good tool but not a viable long term strategy I think.
I definitely agree that it’s a good idea to feel them by taking risks, though. Kinda like jumping in on them to see if they anti-air.
Thinking about it more, I think that the threat of a low from that distance, no matter how unsafe, it actually pretty strong. I’m still not onboard with the “Just guess” mentality, but making my opponent appreciate the threat will make them block low and allow me to walk in much easier. So the big part of it is that while I don’t necessarily have to take the risk, showing my opponent that I’m willing to will open up more options to me. I suppose that’s the basis of a lot of “Uppercut or no” style mentalities, but it makes more sense to me when I put it this way.
Geez, everyone is starin’ at my girl Lili now, lol. Either way, I’m satisfied with how the game is so far, altho the online sound thing is truly terrible. After reading up on my characters (got the guide) I’m definitely looking at this game differently than I previously had.
So are there any noticeable OP teams out there to look out for?
If you play in noisy environments long enough, you won’t even notice the online sound thing. I’m used to not being able to hear the sound in fighters half of the time anyway.
so I am aware that practice makes perfect. I also know that there are ways to to things smarter, not harder
Any tips/tricks from ryu or ken players to combo into stuff, mainly, linking CR.mk into stuff…
How does akuma play? I’m stoked he has his karate chop super.
Keres, good point. Same with tourneys since Asus monitors suck with sound. I would rather the sound suck online and play good rather than fix the sound at the expense of input delay
Jon, I don’t look at it as a random guess. I look at it in many other ways. First, its to test the waters of your opponent to see what he can handle. It’s also seeking pattern recognition. Yeah the move is unsafe, but I notice a pattern in my opponents ground game as to where I notice he is never going to a crouch, just back and forth, and I’m gonna expose that tell with a move that will net me big damage, from far. I’m breaking down my odds of the move hitting based of his actions.
It’s just like rolento players. People were going nuts when I was landing reversal dps consistenly, when in reality, I knew when they were poking with jabs, that when they got pushed out to a specific range, is when they were gonna low forward, to close the gap again. Or I notice they always do 3 jabs before they low forward. It’s not random, its calculated, have a reason to do it
Scott, I don’t think anyone’s denying that as you gather more information about how they play, you’ll start seeing patterns and holes in people’s strings and the probability of your unsafe move paying off increases. For instance, I do know that the last few tournaments we played in, you uppercutted me out of my jab pressure because you knew I would do x many (usually 3, sometimes 2) and then go into low forward on block. It’s the same mentality that I had in SF4 when I would ultra through someone’s c.MK xx Fireball. I would wait to see them do c.MK xx Fireball 2 times in a row, then recognize that they’re getting complacent with that string, and buffer Ultra the moment I saw the MK. Granted, I’d still react to the fireball when hitting KKK, but I didn’t waste energy on the qcf x 2 buffer until I gathered enough information.
What I’m against, or at least trying to discern, is the difference between doing an unsafe move with little to no information about someone’s playstyle and whether or not to regard that as them “testing the waters” or not. For instance, I played online the other day and I would jump in with j.MK, they’d block the jump in and uppercut me. The next time, I did the same thing but blocked after landing and he did it again and I punished him. The third time he did it again and I punished him harder with the meter I had gained. It was sort of a fool me once, fool me twice scenario and I think that ultimately amounts to “Throwing shit out there.” I feel like a lot of players really behave like the latter but then try to sugar coat it into a read or a test and aren’t really thinking as much as they say they are, and it becomes apparent the more sets I play with them. Then it turns into uppercut or no for every possible instant, and that to me is a lot like playing Fuerte.
Have you guys ever seen that Masarap Cammy player? He’s a good example of someone that I think will ignore all data points during the match and just uppercut everything. Or Online Tony.
Nah I know what you are getting at. Ad for online Tony. I don’t think he’s just throwing it out, unless he has meter, then you can throw it out all day and be safe. But if his ratio of hitting a meterless Dp vs missing or having it blocked, is really high, then I think he’s really playing the odds in his favor due to the options that his opponent may have and is getting good reads. He’s pretty successful in this area when he does fierce Dp in your face, on your wakeup, 4 Times in a row. Somewhere in the match, he conditioned his opponent to think an spd was coming?
I know what you mean tho, when someone just throws something out with no reason, and calls it a read. Fraudulent lol
I haven’t touched poison so I really couldn’t say. I did play wolfkrone a few times yesterday and it seems that despite how good he is he couldn’t zone effectively with poison I got in for free alot and all he could do was block. she just didn’t seem too good at all right now. JurI would be a better choice or maybe cammy if you want to play with hot chicks lol.
(see tucson play)