Oh, sorry. I misunderstood your question. I was confining myself to the three charactes already mentioned.
Your assessment of who the best rushdown in the game is is probably correct in terms of top 3, but I don’t think Bang is the top - Valk is probably the most powerful offensive character in the game because his wolf mixup is just ridiculous. [w]C > [w]j.A vs [w]C > land > [w]A is stupid hard to react to, AND he has a command grab there too.
I honestly think Bang is worse than Ragna, in spite of the fact that a lot of Ragna players go “Oh, poor us, our absurd damage is totally made up for by our weak mixup!”; Honestly, I think that’s a load of nonsense. Gauntlet Hades can come out of nowhere in a huge number of situations, which makes it very hard to react to and his 6D comes out fast enough to be a frame trap from some normals and leads into an extremely ugly guessing game if you block it. He also gains heat at an outrageous pace.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter how you rank those three, because the only other pure rushdown characters in the game (Makoto and Tsubaki) got nerfed to Q Tier for Extend. I don’t really consider Litchi a pure rushdown character due to the nature of her poking and keepaway game. (Sortof like Hazama in that regard).
As for how neutral works, for Litchi, it’s mostly about using a staff launch to cover your approach and force your opponent to block so you can mix them up, but you can also play poking/CH fishing with some of her staff normals. That’s an oversimplified version, of course, but the idea is, as always, to control space and put your opponent somewhere where you can attack them. For Litchi, that means long range pokes like 5C[m], 5B, 6B, 6C, 3C and j.C[m] and her two staff launches. The latter in particular can occupy quite a bit of space and require your opponent to block while you get into better position.
Oh, no. You didn’t misunderstand at all, I just went off into a small little tangent regarding who I thought was best at rushdown.
I really do love Litchi, and I intend to master her. Her neutral game seems really interesting to me, I wish she had Bang’s c.L though.
I’m still very confused on combo notations. I saw this combo on her wikia: 5B 5C(2) 3C {D} tk red staff2 tk red tsubame JC kote JC~
It’s a near corner combo, and I have no idea what the heck it translates to. I’m assuming that tk means tiger knee, and jc means jump cancel. A means light, B means medium, C means heavy, D means drive/special attack. But what are the numbers? Also, why are there no commas in between each notation?
Not even sure if I should be learning combos right now. This is all pretty new information for me.
No problem bro
if you go by the notation guide you should read the combo as
Neutral B attack, Neutral C attack, cancel the move at the second hit of Neutral C with down forward C attack, Hold D tiger knee red staff 2 (i dont know the move for it), tiger knee red tsubame (i don’t know the move for this either), jump cancel then kote ( i dont know what kote means ), jump cancel and press immediately something (i don’t know because the combo is incomplete)
Lol, tried an online match today for the first time just to test out the netcode.
Ended up playing this Ragna user who kept spamming 3 moves throughout the entire match (hells fang, dead spike, and his drive) he ended up destroying me pretty badly and kept taunting mid-match.
Though, the netcode seems really good from first impression; fast and with little to no input lag.
The game itself feels a tad awkward at this point in time though. Dashing with the analog stick is hella awkward for me.
Hell’s Fang is a free punish they do the followup. Dead Spike is plus though, so careful.
The netcode IS really good.
Dashing with the analog stick sucks. (Same deal with characters who have double-tap moves). You may want to just try to learn to do everything with the D-pad.
Played a Tager today as well, dude kept attracting me towards him. I was like “Wtf is this?!” Guess I should have tested him out a bit more.
Where are you guys getting the frame data from?
I really do love Valk though, he reminds me of Spencer from UMvC3. Hard hitting, moves around the screen quite fast, decent normals. When I found out that he could use his wolf form to continue combos from his human form I almost exploded with excitement, damn is he fun to play. Litchi is really fun too, I love the characters who have 2 different forms.
I wish I could use the D-pad, but no matter how hard I try I cannot seem to consistently pull of shoryuken motions, qcf, qcb, half circle motions, etc on it.
I wish I had a stick bro, and a console. I’m just too busy lately and don’t have the time to sit near my T.V and grind it out with my characters.
The safest way to approach with Ragna is going to be getting the spacing down on dash 5B - Ragna’s 5B has hilarious range in the later frames, and can stuff a lot of attacks. If your opponent is throwing out dangerous stuff that’s beating you out (DPs or other high risk moves) you can dash > barrier to bait them.
Ragna’s j.C is also absurdly strong, and jump-ins in this game are markedly safer than, say, SF4. If your opponent is too good at anti-airing you, try jumping towards him, then doing a neutral double-jump up right as you’re about to come into range of their anti-air. The idea is to make it miss and then punish with a falling j.C. Belial Edge is safe on block as well, but it doesn’t lead to much, so it’s mostly a surprise tactic for when your opponent is in the corner, and a combo tool.
You -can- IAD in with j.C as well, but it’s much more risky than a basic jump in because you can’t barrier or double-jump if you commit to an IAD (Though you can barrier after it finishes), plus your trajectory is very predictable, making it easier for opponents to AA you. You probably don’t want to do this unless you need to get in on a zoning character or something and don’t think they’ll expect it.
Also, once you have 50 heat, you can do Hell’s Fang > Rapid Cancel or Gauntlet Hades > Rapid Cancel. You can also do the followup for either of those before RCing if you think your opponent is going to try to punish.
Mostly though, you should learn to win footsies with 5B/5C. Ragna’s normals are kinda hilariously good for footsies.
Excellent advice, thanks. I think I was being way too impatient when trying to get in… and I had never even considered using the double-jump like that.
I can’t really claim credit for that double jump strategy, since I only learned it from having it used on me.
Patience is generally important in this game in spite of how fast and crazy it sometimes seems. Ragna doesn’t have any really crazy tricks, so you have to play footsies a little bit, but he has strong tools for that, so it’s not a big deal.
The game starts getting more complicated when both players are jumping all over the place. x.x
An execution tier list? Like a “how hard are these characters to learn” list? Not that I know of, in any official capacity anyway. As such, I shall make one up:
Difficult Tier: Carl (duh), Hazama (seems to have a lot of tricky ‘optimal’ combos.)
Kinda tricky tier: Tao, Valk, Rachel
Average tier: Everyone not in another tier
Duh Tier: Ragna
Okay, so that last one was a cheap shot, but still.
Also note that this has nothing to do with how easy it is to win with those characters - it’s strictly a “how difficult is it to do this character’s combos” rating. It doesn’t take into account things like how good the character’s footsies/fundamentals tools are or anything like that. (Though Ragna shines here too.)
Well, well. Valk in kinda tricky tier, I’m fine with that. As long as he has the tools to deal with all sorts of things/characters (zoning with Lambda, Tager, etc) then I’m fine with learning him.
My god, didn’t think I’d need any help for combos; but this one thing regarding Valkey’s wolf cancels has been frustrating.
Example: 2C > 6B > 5C > 236C > 9D > (Corner carries) > w[j.B > j.A] > 5D >[SIZE=4]** 2C** > 6C > 2C > j.214B > 2D > w[236B > j.236A > j.236B > 7CD] > j.C > 2A > 5B > 2C > w[j.A] > j.DC[/SIZE]
[5534 Damage, 65% Heat Gained] The two bolded/underlined/big notations are where the combos turns blue A.K.A I fail. I’ve been doing this over and over again for hours with no success. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. Each failure is right after a wolf cancel into human as well.
Dead Spike is plus though, so careful.
