Most characters can combo into Astral. I’m a scrub and I can do it with Tsubaki from more or less any starter, because you can do it after 22B and basically every single ground combo ends with that.
It’s not a good video. It’s a terrible video. I only keep it up as a reminder of how bad of a job I did with it. It was rushed out, it was nearly 3 times longer than it was supposed to be, it had nothing to keep the viewer engaged, and above all else, it didn’t even display the point I attempted to make as well as it would if I simply wrote it in text form. I planned on making another one late last year but stopped to start writing an SFXT beginner-intermediate guide (which is still not finished). I don’t wanna fuck up that badly on a future video, so I’m just tossing around ideas right now. That’s enough of my blog rambling 
And Noel drive spam is hella easy to stop. Any good Noel player will panic if they do the wrong drive string because they know how badly they can get punished for it.
I totally agree with that last line/statement for sure. Noel is risk/reward because most of what you go for is a risk and you can get punished like mad for things. When she gets a hit, she can go crazy, but a surprising few amount of moves are safe.
Please to splain to me in PRECISE DETAIL where and how you “punish” a drive string.
Everyone who has every tried to do this for me has just gone “Well duh, look how negative all her stuff is.” and it’s like “… you know that how negative something is doesn’t matter if you cancel it, right?” yeah, great, you can punish at the end of the string if you somehow don’t get hit by the 21 frame overhead, AND Noel decides to “just stop” doing the drive instead of pushing you WAY the hell away with 6C > Bloom Trigger.
So yeah. Great. If the Noel player does something totally stupid (i.e. “does the ‘wrong’ drive string”) then yes, you can punish, but if your opponent is not brain damaged, how is this so punishable? Real examples please.
In fairness you can’t really say “please provide examples of how her stuff is punishable” and then say “but don’t give me this ‘negative on block’ stuff”. For one, all of her Drives have projectile properties which means that with the projectile invincibility of Tager’s Sledge he can go through and punish like there’s no problem at all, which is why the match in CSX is almost 7-3 in Tager’s favour sometimes. This also means Hakumen players can deal with them quite easily. People always complain about how “ridiculous and stupid 2D is”, but the fact is the move’s not even an overhead anymore in CSX, it has slow startup, no invincibility, and is one of the most predictable Drive string starters ever. Even 4D, as utterly predictable as it is and as short as the invincibility on it is, isn’t as predictable. The only Drive usage that seems that predictable is the j.4D move that newbies will use all the time to try to get out of a corner.
What people don’t realize is that only a few things really accurately lead into Drive strings, and they all are either unsafe, have bad startup, or are predictable, with some just being in the corner. Examples are:
2D
6A
6B
3C
Throw
Muzzle Flitter
4D (when you’re in the corner and then you have to Assault Through to wall bounce them)
Every single one of those is punishable, easy to see if you even try to look for it, and can leave her wide open. If they hit, sure it works out, but if they don’t you take just as much (and sometimes more) damage than you would have gotten from it.
Noel goes for an overhead, gets beaten out. Noel goes for the low, gets beaten out. Noel does the spinny gun without doing a previous drive with enough block stun like d.C, gets beaten out. Assault through, blocked and punished. Spring raid, make yourself a sandwich and come back and punish it. Hell, as a guy who mains Noel but hates mirror matches, when I fight my friend, I switch to rags. And if he does a drive and I block it, I can just sit back and wait for something with a long startup and just ID it, or even just 2A it sometimes. People complain about her being invincible during drive but it’s only on certain spots and if you know the matchup (aka you know where that invincibility is), you can stop it easily.
Yeah, she can cancel it into Bloom Trigger to make it safe, but it’s not like she’s at advantage at all, and depending on the spacing, some characters can be back in her face so quickly that she’ll regret doing the drive to begin with. The only reason Noel’s drive seems better than it is is because people don’t respect her options (and they’re very easy to respect) and end up getting fatal’d by 4D over and over.
Intimate match-up knowledge in order to properly deal with someone who is brainlessly mashing.
I love it.
Cmon, guys, let’s not turn this into the “What I hate about BB” thread. Part of the reason why BB has trouble getting traction is that from the outside in, it looks like BB players don’t even respect their own game.
Every time a “fraudulent friendly” character is ever so slightly mentioned (Ragna, Noel, Tager, Mu, etc) the entire thread goes to shit. It can’t be helped.
Oh well.
Why not? A move that is cancelled does not have minus frames. It’s that simple. The only time minus frames matter is on moves that you have to END with (or go into something similarly unsafe.). This means that it doesn’t matter if, say, 4D (start) or 6C (Followup) are “minus” because you just do something else afterwards. Eventually you have to end, yes, but by this point your opponent has been pushed back a lot and you can practically reset to neutral with Bloom Trigger.
ONE character in the game can easily break out of your blockstrings, therefore, they suck?
Nonsense - MAYBE if you’re doing stuff randomly at neutral, AND he happens to be swinging at the same time, he’ll manage to cut your drive but the moves that can cut are all real slow (or in the case of 3C, don’t really hit much of an area) so it’s not like he can do this on reaction. He’d be better off just pushing D.
What do you mean “anymore”? When did it ever? CT? It hasn’t had overhead properties as far back as I have frame data (CS1).
And how does it have “no invincibility” if it has 1-8 frames of foot invulnerability, and has a ‘hop kick’ hitbox after that? Meaning, it beats all low attacks for free.
Finally, what makes it more “predictable” than any other move?
Please explain why pushing buttons at neutral is “predictable”. How do I “predict” whether Noel will do 2D or 4D at any given time?
I don’t understand this at all. Every single one of Noel’s normals except for 3C can cancel into a drive. Will it combo? Not necessarily, but that doesn’t matter if you’re just looking to get a free blockstring.
Why yes, I’m SURE I can accurately predict which of 8 moves Noel is going to randomly throw out at any given moment, so I can pick the one move in my arsenal that will beat it. And if I choose the “safe” option to “respect her options” and block, Noel gets a free mixup.
Seriously. 2D/4D is painful enough, because everything that beats one loses to the other (Unless you’re Ragna, I guess, since Inferno Divider beats EVERYTHING. Stupid move.) but you expect me to predict 6B vs 3C vs 2D vs 4D at any given time? Are you for real? Have you ever played against Noel?
As for turning this into “What I hate about BB” - I’m asking for REAL ADVICE. It’s not my problem that all that advice seems to consist of is “LOL, it’s so easy to see it all coming.” Obviously, if that were true, I wouldn’t be asking this question.
All her stuff with “long startup” has like, a 2 frame gap after the move that preceeds it. If you are 2Aing your opponent out of drive strings, your opponent is terrible.
Hey, hey. Mu’s not fraudulent.
The problem is that you’re turning into a bunch of whining and raging about how stupid Noel is. Of course it’s not going to be as easy in actual practice, especially against a player who knows what he’s doing and isn’t just mashing D. But more characters have more options against Noel than you think.
You ask for advice and answers and I gave you advice and answers. Doing j.D>d.6B>d.6C>Bloom in a combo isn’t canceling, it’s linking. And nobody goes straight from those moves into Drive in terms of canceling at all, since even the Drive attacks I listed are linked. 6A and 6B are followed by the first hit of 6C, Muzzle Flitter is followed by 2B, and both Throw (corner) and 3C are followed by 22BBBC(varied in number of B shots depending on situation). I’ve played as and against enough Noels to know how much you can get screwed if the opponent has some basic knowledge of the character or matchup knowledge, so it really isn’t rocket science. And for the record, yes I was referring to the CT/CS1 era with 2D.
I’m sorry that you’re having trouble with it, but when people are giving you legitimate information to help against something that can become easy to deal with after just a little bit of practice, and your response is to get angry and claim it’s not ‘real advice’ then I’m not really sure what you want to hear. Like, do you want us to go and say “Hells yeah, that’s hella gay! You can’t do anything about that shit, it’s so awful and impossible to block, counter, or punish!!”? Because if, so I can’t truthfully say that. Almost everybody I talk to that plays BB and especially either plays as or against Noel often pretty much echoes my sentiments here. Pretty much, if that’s the reaction I’m going to get from advice, then I don’t know what else to say but learn your normals and practice blocking better.
CS1 “era” 2D was not an overhead, as I said earlier.
Going to do some research, but I believe you are wrong about all that stuff being linking.
And all I want is for you to pick a general purpose case in which you can be punished for something and demonstrate how and why and what is required. Not “Oh, Tager, can just break out of our stuff for free.” or “You just to predict what she’s going to do!” because neither of those are generally applicable, one because it’s a single character with a unique ability, and the other because that’s basically just saying “Play better” which means that, in fact, this isn’t so easy after all.
Maybe everyone you talk to agrees with you, which would explain your strange opinions, because I basically see two camps on this issue:
People who play Noel, and are like "Well duh, just block and punish!!1"
AND
People who don’t play Noel, who think her drive moves are BS.
While I don’t expect you to agree with me that Noel’s drives were stupid, I DO expect you to understand that they’re not free punishes for your opponent like you keep implying.
Hell, even providing a video of someone “just blocking and punishing” Noel drive strings would be a good start.
Basically, I am cranky because your “advice” is vague and useless. 
Don’t turn this into a binary “with me or against me” scenario. Because there are tons of people who don’t play Noel and don’t think her Drive moves are BS.
If I’m just considering my own mains, Mu can crush any given gap in Chain Revolver with a well-timed DP. Lambda doesn’t have as strong a defensive option, but she can Act Parser out or use an anti-air the moment a 2D appears. I can use barrier to get space to backdash, or if I have meter, just Counter Assault. If the blocked string ends in a Bloom Trigger to make her safe, Noel no longer has a pressure advantage, and now she has to spend time getting in against my projectiles that she doesn’t have many answers to in the first place.
No, you’re cranky because you’re not hearing what you wanted to hear, which was a 100% guaranteed foolproof way to stop Noel’s Drives at any time. If such a thing existed, that would be terrible design. Fighting games are all about continuing to find counters to your opponent’s counters.
Re: Airk. For the record, doing a series of Drive moves together in a string is what I refer to when I say that they link. j.D>d5D>d5C for instance is a link.
If you want a video of people just blocking and punishing newbie Drive block strings, I can link you to an example. In fact, I think I might have found the perfect series for you.
Link is a very specific term which means doing an attack, letting it recover completely and then doing a second attack. The opposite is cancel which is instead of letting the attack recover you cancel the recovery directly into your next action (usually attack but could also be jump).
In general cancels are faster and more safe than links but linking a short recovery into a short startup can be more safe than canceling into a long startup attack like an overhead.
Noels Drive are a bit in between as you can’t cancel directly after the first active frame but have to wait a couple of frames more. Other characters with similar late cancels are Tsubaki’s followup attacks and most of Hakumens cancels. To compensate for this delay Noels Chain folloups have more than the usual hitstun which allow the attacks to still combo.
Well yeah, it’s not a true link in the sense of the word, but in terms of application and the way it’s used it pretty much is for intents and purposes. But yeah, I see what you mean.
Here’s what I’ve taken from this discussion so far for the against noel argument.
“I keep getting hit by Noel’s drive. It’s bullshit. What? I can get around it easily, I just need to know the matchup? Bullshit, if I know how to fight ragna, I shouldn’t have to know any other matchups ever!”
If you guys hate comeback mechanics in fighting games just stop complaining about them and go play a different fighting game that doesn’t have one. Also let’s not complain about characters, especially Noel people. Just find out how to punish her “spamming drive” by yourself.
You missed the “You’re not using terms remotely correctly” (Seriously. WTF was up with that use of “link”?) and “Noel’s rewards for her drive hits are way higher than the rewards for the stuff that beats them” bits. Really though, I’m just waiting for someone to explain WHAT about the matchup I need to know, because right now, the secret tip is “know what your opponent will do before they do it.” Which isn’t advice, or feasable. It doesn’t help that Livewire keeps saying things that are verifiably wrong. (2D has “no invulnerability”, drives are “links”)
And who says I know how to fight Ragna?
Really though, what I’m looking for is for people to stop arguing that Noel’s drives are SOOOOOO EASY to punish. /eyeroll.
Off to watch those videos. Thank you.