With Joe you generally want to be always moving fast, be it from long range or close range. He has a really bad blind spot on him: he lacks a good vertical anti-air. So in light of this problem, you need space between you and the opponent (a large time/frame advantage also helps) to set up an anti-air j.CD or fancy run-under. His EX Tiger Kick can help out with this issue, but it costs meter. If the opponent gets in on you, prepare to block for a bit unless you wanna go full Haregoro and try backdashing or rolling or some other risky method to escape.
With that in mind, Joe can cover a lot of the screen and go into a bunch of fullscreen and close range traps. hcf+A covers fast, so from long range you can start trailing his projectiles to attack from two fronts. One really simple and safe trap is to do hcf+A > hcf+B/D. If the opponent tries hopping over the projectile, the Slash Kick can anti-air them and the move is really easy to space to be safe on block. These setups can be beaten (for the one I listed, some early jump-ins can beat the Slash Kick, or the opponent could do a reaction DM) but you can bait those responses or constantly change your tactics so you’re not predictable (i.e. next time trail your projectile all the way up to the opponent, and start a close range mixup since you can get in on them easily).
For closer matters, Joe has a st.A that hits crouchers and you can chain st.A > cr.B > st.A >f.B for a hitconfirm that incorporates a low. Unfortunately his f.B has terrible recovery on block; you can cancel it into a fireball, but that makes you more susceptible to guard rolls and hcf+A wont make a tight string so you could get DP’d or DM’d in between. So generally you’ll wanna be sure to have his chains down moreso than random f.B blockstrings. His hop pressure is basic, but j.D and j.B can cross up or work as any normal jump in.
Ideally Joe wants to work the opponent into the corner where he can do his stun combos/1 Power/Drive combos which can do 45% easily. Cornering can be easy from his zoning game or just continually hitting the opponent with lights/hops/running pressure, and all his BnBs into Slash Kick carry well. Even when you corner the opponent, you’ll need to be able to snipe jump out attempts with either frametraps, a j.CD (best choice, especially if it counterhits which leads into a huge combo), or a psyhic qcb+K.
But believe it or not, Joe actually has really powerful midscreen HD combos. But in terms of meter or 50% drive combos, it’s all about the corner. Just search for “Haregoro” on youtube to see the best Joe player in action if you want more reference.
Kim’s got them normals. You can run some gimmicks with his specials such as qcb,b+D for an instant air overhead hangetsuzan, or use ff+A against a cornered opponent and go for a rebound gimmick, but you’ll need much more than that.
He can work his way in by anti-airing an offensive opponent with a st/cl.D (vs vertical approaches), st.B (vs more horizontal approaches), or cr.B/D against whiffed jumping attacks or at max sweep range. His air-to-airs are also neat, and you can even try ff+A and buffer a special so that if it hits and AAs, you get the combo followup automatically. Otherwise he can get in by playing footsies with pretty much the same normals. Scare the opponent with a st.B, then run in to cr.B range, or hop, or get in closer, etc. Once in, he’s still more about his normal strings than his specials since only qcb+B is safe on block, but it doesn’t combo from lights unless you EX it. That said, his j.A and j.D are great cross ups you can easily set up via blockstrings (such as doing one or two cr.Bs, then (hyper) hopping forward with j.A), with cr.B and j.C his high/low game is strong, and his st.D is a pain for the defender to mess with since it’s very difficult to counter with cr.Bs, on hit it links into a combo, and on block Kim’s still in their face. You can use the fear of st.D to get an opponent to try a cr.A or mash chain cr.Bs, which could be countered with a hop for not a guaranteed punish, but you’re still stealing the frame advantage and possibly landing a cross up. They also might try DPing eventually since it’s really hard to escape the move since there’s absolutely no way to hop out of it.
So with Kim you can run his footsie game, shut down a lot of options for the opponent, hitconfirm into a hard knockdown into a safejump or cross up or empty hop setup each time meterlessly, have access to a 3F reversal (EX Hienzan) which can even beat certain safe setups like Kyo’s hcb+K > sj.CD safejump, and be able to have nice defensive and offensive options available to you.
