I’ll actually say while some characters are better at certain positions, you should also get used to playing your team in different orders as well. It’s more important to get the match ups you like rather than sticking to a single arrangement.
Seems like team order doesn’t matter a lot. One specific order might have an advantage but if it starts with a bad matchup playing it in a different order isn’t suicide.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, I haven’t been playing this game for very long.
Ah alright…I was under the impression that 2nd/3rd order didn’t matter as much, but that first was generally a character who didn’t gain a lot from burning drive/meter or built a good amount of meter/drive for the next characters…
It’s not to say there isn’t a preferred order, but that you shouldn’t get comfortable with a single order or else people can order their teams to give you the worst match up possible.
The first position is generally a position where characters who need meter fail and characters who need minimal amounts of meter succeed. It is also a position where characters with lower damage outputs can shine because at this early point in the round almost no one is going to be dealing massive amounts of damage. But the thing to be aware of you might have a match up that is harder to face on point than later in the order. Mistakes on point while bad and not as punishing as later in the order.
The second position is a spot almost anyone can go. In this position having a good 2 Bar HD or large combo for low meter is ideal because in this position you may have to HD the other’s point character if you lost the first round bad or in a close match you may want to have that burst of damage to take out the opponent’s 2nd character. Overall this spot damage dealing abilities is important, but it is also not completely required because this is still a point where meter usage is average.
Anchor is a lot more specialized of a position. By this point in the game you are fully loaded with meter so if your character can’t do damage then they better be able to stop the opponent from doing it. If you can’t do a decent HD with your character they shouldn’t be on Anchor because Anchor vs Anchor is usually one of the quickest parts of the matches often with a single hit being the difference between victory and defeat. A dropped combo in anchor vs anchor can cost you the match. Another important quality of the anchor spot is being able to make up a large deficit because if your first two characters get OCVed you will have to try to run through all three of the opponent’s characters and doing small amounts of damage won’t cut it.
While some characters fit different positions better than others, it is far more important to position your characters to get the best match ups. For instance I run King, EX Iori, and Yuri. While my preferred order is in that order since I like King on point and Yuri in the back there are many teams I will definitely run a different order against. The two main characters who will I avoid this order against is Point Benimaru and Anchor Kim. King has trouble in general dealing with Beni, but it is the worst in the point position. When King has no meter anti-airing Beni is a royal pain in the butt. Beni’s high jump arc and j.D basically beats all of King’s grounded AA and with no meter all of Kings normal answers (EX Trap Shot and Surprise Rose) to this are not available. So to stop it you basically have to take the air frequently as King to stop Beni from just getting in for free. But while King has good options in the air Beni has way better options in the air. After a while you start taking more damage from Beni than you deal. It’s possible to do, but it is by far one of the match ups I try to avoid if possible.
In the case of Anchor Kim vs Yuri it’s a match up where it feels Yuri has to play very very lame compared to her normal game plan while Kim pretty much can be Kim. The other problem is since Yuri can’t take to the air much her normals have a hard against Kim’s great normals. Overall it’s another match up I just don’t like because it takes away a lot of what makes Yuri good. I prefer to match up someone else against Kim. In fact it can be one of the match ups I’ll actually Anchor King even though she isn’t the best anchor on my team. Her tool set IMO works well against Kim.
I’ll also in tournaments against players I know aren’t as good put Yuri on point because she is a character that blows up inexperienced players. I can usually run through two or even three characters with Yuri.
So while there may be an order you like to run or even an optimal order, you should still get used to playing your characters out of order because you might find against a specific team your normal order has trouble while playing in a non-standard order gives you a better advantage.
Glad you guys are helping each other out. I’m too burnt out on this game to care anymore, but it’s nice to see in my update alerts that people are still posting in this thread. I really appreciate the fact that everyone is helping each other out. On a side note, I’m working on the 02um, 98um, and 98 wikis if anyone is willing to try the games. All of them are Works in Progress so don’t expect completed stuff until I say so. For the mean time, Team Japan, Team Yagami, and Kusunagi’s pages are finished on 02um, I just need to read it over again for editorial work and make sure things are spelled right or communicated more clearly.
Is there a yogaflame/blackvegeta/ssf4evo style channel for kof?
The videos are a little spread out, but you can find a lot of good ones.
Try this thread - http://dreamcancel.com/forum/index.php?topic=1995.0
You’ll find plenty of good KOF related channels there
Kind of specific question.
So normally, you got your pressure going, and you do hop CD/hop C into cr.B, cr.B, into another hop, or run up cr.B, cr.B, and you do that a couple of times, and your opponent catches on, and they start pressing st.A, and the generic punish for that is sweep (although certain characters obviously have much better punishment options).
The problem is, I’m playing Mature, and Mature’s sweep is stubby as fuck, and doesn’t reach that far. I’ve been testing vs Hwa Jai, and because she’s even after a cr.lk and she has no low attacks with range, all of her normals appear to lose to the st.A. cr.A, cr.B and cr.D whiff, st.A trades, as does st.b, while st.C, st.D, cr.C and CD all lose to it, as does qcb A/B/C/D/B+D and dpA. qcb A+C, dpA+C and her DMs beat it, but they’re all unsafe. Is it just a case of I need to not be doing that string? Or am I missing something?
I’m new to KoF but I know FGs so I have a couple of suggestions:
You have unsafe specials that win - what’s the problem? That’s not as good as other character’s options like a good sweep, but maybe rushdown pressure is not mature’s strong point, or she applies it from a different situation (ie not repeated short hops).
Mature also has fireballs which are almost free pressure at that range (idk how fast/visible the startup is).
Delay your st.C/st.D/long range poke by a frame or two. At worst you force them to block again.
Full jump instead of hopping. Changes your angle to the point that st.A won’t protect your opponent.
Also, I heard someone mention KoF has shortcuts - what are they, if any, and do they interfere with doing what you want like they do in AE?
The only shortcuts I know of are actually technically more awkward than just doing the motion, and they definitely don’t get in the way.
One of the most useful shortcuts is for SRK you can do HCB->F. This helps drive cancelling a SRK to a QCB->HCF super and obviously doesn’t work if you already have a HCB->F move that uses the same button. Another big one is F->QCF motion to get a shoryuken move and then if you hold down the button you’ll drive cancel into your fireball. This only works in HD mode so you don’t accidentally get it and waste drive (Elisabeth can do this shortcut out of HD mode but she’s the exception)
I’ve never gotten a move to come out via shortcut when I was trying to do something else.
So no cr.mk xx fireb SUREYOUCAN horror?
Not that I’ve experienced or am aware of.
You can get something like that, but it is more because when you are coming out of a run and try to fireball you still have the forward input buffered.
You have some annoying overlaps, but it is nowhere near as annoying as SF4. And those usually happen because the way the game buffers inputs.
Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but here goes.
Currently, my main game is SFIV and I main Yun, though I do play other games when I can (it can be hard only owning a PC though). With KOFXIII coming to PC soon, I’d like to start at least getting some general info on character playstyles. I like to think I’m fairly proficient with all character archetypes, but I really love to play characters that are more rushdown heavy, hence Yun being my main. So far, what I’ve seen of Kyo and Iori looks really nice. If you guys have any advice or general info on the more rushdown oriented people in this game, I’d really appreciate it.
Both Kyo’s and both Iori’s fit that bill. Other ones you might look into are characters like Yuri and Benimaru.
Another good place to check is the Shoryuken Wiki for KOF XIII although some of the data might be kinda dated. Also someone didn’t fix “trip-guard anti-air” in the King section and be sure to know that it’s called “trip anti-air” instead. The wiki should be good enough for character summaries and descriptions to at least know what each character is generally about.
So my Mature’s never been really good, nor have I played this game in a very long time. But I hopped into training mode and thought back to this.
First of all: You’ve correctly assessed that Mature’s metagame doesn’t quite play out like the traditional hopmixup triangle.
She can still do it though. You have to be aware of Mature’s exceptional range on her cr.B. You can easily do cr.BB <wait> cr.B, and it will consistently beat st.A and doesn’t whiff like you say it does. You just have to make sure the first cr.BB string is fast enough. Mature’s cr.B can quite easily hit opponents while the opponents are out of range to even hit any crouching normals. cr.A also has good range, and is more attractive because it cancels, but the range is worse, and the hitbox isn’t as low, so it clearly doesn’t beat Hwa’s st.A ever, but I wouldn’t count it out against say K’ (although I haven’t checked).
But okay: You do cr.BB, your opponent mashes st.A, you hit your delayed cr.B. What then? You did 40 damage, and can’t really combo off of it, unless you do some super gutsy HD activation, which I don’t recommend. So although it works, I wouldn’t say it’s worth it.
Another option is st.B. It CAN and will lose to st.A sometimes. But you can chain into st.B which will make gaps small enough that st.A will simply get frametrapped. st.B cancels into qcb+B for fun rush bullshit.
A final option in this situation is, doing a small walk up after cr.BB and go into cl.C. The activation range of cl.C on mature is obscene, combined with it being 2 frames startup, makes it that the move is actually really potent at beating out all kinds of stuff. The nice thing about cl.C of course is that you can consider cancelling into fireball without too much risk, mixed up with qcb+B, dp+P crossup nonsense etc.)
So TL;DR:
Yes, mature can’t do the usual metagame, but she can use some of her strengths (LOOOONG NORMALS and great cl.C activation range) to ‘break’ the standard hopmixup triangle.
Don’t focus too much on doing hopmixups with Mature in the first place though. Her jump normals are awkward, and like you said, she lacks a reliable sweep. It’s not really what mature ‘does’. She’s much better at spamming j.CD all day, getting fireballs on screen (although that’s arguably much worse now in XIII) and doing funny stuff with her qcb+K and dp+P stuff.
Thing is, I haven’t watched this tutorial in a while, but from what I remember, hop/jab/sweep are the primary footsie tools, so if your character can’t do that, or something similar, it’s means your character is weird. And, I’m not going to go around burning bar on unsafe moves which don’t lead to huge damage, the risk reward is in no way worth it.
Honestly, I’m asking because while I can get wins with Mature, and I know a lot of good options with her, I still have no real idea about how this fits together into an actual gameplan, or what situations I’m supposed to be trying to setup, I feel quite lost with her. I’m pretty sure she is a pressure character, but her pressure seems fairly awkward against people who actually understand that qcb.B is -4 on block, and the obvious place to start is the default KoF playstyle.
30 frame startup, so no, not really an option at that range :p.
Her long rage pokes which aren’t st.B are really slow, it doesn’t really work.
This does kind of work, and I should use it more, but it doesn’t actually punish them for pressing st.A, since the recover in time to at least block, and anti-air too, if they’re on the ball.
The difference between fast 2x.cr.B and slow 2xcr.B is an important one. I have been doing slow 2xcr.B because, well, otherwise I can’t confirm 2xcr.B, so why would I bother doing it? But at least “you don’t have the execution (yet)” is a better answer than “nope”.
But yeah, I’ve started trying to play Mature’s neutral game very differently. more dp.A from neutral, less hop.CD, and when they do block a hop.CD, I’m trying to do st.CDxdp.A instead of cr.B, cr.B. Still working on what are the right risks to take to maintain pressure after the meaty dp.A though.
Of course in a lot of matchups it’s not even a thing, you can just beat people with footsie standing B buffered into qcb.C, but there’s a lot of matchups where that doesn’t fly, and playing against a friend who runs Billy/King/Hwa Jai, all of whom blow that up, showed me I needed to start looking at her other tools more.