I always thought the hardest match-up in 3S was Twelve versus Ken, as Ken can shut down almost every option Twelve has with just two moves - LP SRK (raped on the ground) and EX hurricane kick (raped in the air). Then you throw in Ken’s ambiguous cross-ups, Twelve’s lack of wake-up options, Ken’s easy hit confirms and Twelve’s low damage output kicking Ken’s risk/reward ratio right out of whack and it just becomes insanely hard. There’s not a lot you can do besides hoping the Ken player is hella inexperienced against Twelve. Urien I can deal with, Elena players are rare [scrub rant] but Ken players are everywhere and I just out and out hate that match-up [/scrub rant].
But I’ve seen some posts here and there saying that Q versus Yun is the hardest match-up in 3S. How so? I don’t know how the match-up works so I’m completely ignorant but I know how hard Twelve has to work to avoid getting raped against Ken, let alone thinking about winning, and I can’t even begin another match-up that’s just as hard.
And doesn’t Sean have any ridiculously lop-sided match-ups or do his shoto normals keep him, er, vaguely ‘competitive’?
Q VS Yun is hard to top.
Watch Kuroda VS KO at the SBO where him and Hayao made it to the semi-finals.
He pretty much just stood there and died.
Q’s slow speed + his huge hitbox + geneii jin = trouble.
Oro vs. Chun is pretty fucking bad. All of his jump ins lose to Chun’s b+HP or c.MK. All of his pokes except for c.MK lose to Chun and basically…you have to risk a lot trying to get in on her. If Chun plays right…he pretty much has no way to get in outside of totally mind fucking the Chun player up. Like dashing over a c.MK and setting up for s.MP. Which is risky as fuck. Luckily Oro can do 100 percent stun to Chun with EX Tengu and Tengu in general rapes her shit if she gets knocked down in the corner. It’s just that Chun makes it so hard to even land a fucking close s.MP it’s stupid. She can also super through your fireballs on reaction, if qcf+K gets blocked…you die and if you whiff a poke…you can die. You just have to be smarter than the Chun player to win. Unless Oro can get a hit in he is otherwise totally shut out by her.
oro vs chun is def not the hardest match up, even though it is painful. at least oro has the option of 100% stun on chun, what does q have on yun? like fucking nothing
I would say the two worst matchups in the game are Twelve vs Ken and Q vs Makoto, and in my personal (probably biased) opinion, I think Q vs Makoto is the game’s worst. Twelve vs Ken is stupid because Ken limits what Twelve can do down to run-away poking, which does like no damage and isn’t effective enough to keep Ken out, and even if Twelve dominates the match for the first 20 seconds, Ken can kill him in the next 5. Ken makes it so that Twelve can’t really attack, let alone play the airdashing and throw games Twelve likes to play, but at least Twelve can still play a keepaway game. Q vs Makoto is stupid because she takes away all of Q’s games; he can’t play keepaway or even run-away, Makoto just has him covered wherever he goes. There’s no sweet spot to stand in, no strategy to use, no games to play when Makoto is waking up, no games to play when Q is waking up, no safe taunts, and few pokes, not to mention that Q is super-susceptible to getting juggled and that one Abare combo plus any other reasonably-stunny attack equals dead Q; this is another situation where, even if Q manages to keep Makoto out and poke her health down, she can kill him with two entirely safe-if-missed guesses. Q has to guess correctly to win, plain and simple. That’s why I think it’s the worst matchup in the game: the matchup is so bad that Q has no real strategy, only guessing and luck.
Q vs Yun is hard and about 2-8 for him, but Makoto and probably Chun and maybe Akuma are even worse. Yang isn’t as bad a matchup for him as half a dozen of Q’s other matchups, although it’s still like 3.5-6.5 or so. As for Alex/Oro vs Chun, those are hard matchups, but I don’t think they really belong in this discussion.
PS Sean cannot be considered a character in Third Strike. Even if he was, he would be dominated by everyone, but no single matchup as bad as the two above.
Oro can dance around Q all day and go right under his dash punches. He’s so tall that trying to evade most of anything Oro does to him is nearly impossible, and even if you get all your taunts off, Tengu still chips you like mad, and knocks you out of reversal super. :rolleyes: Just the fact that he can play keepaway vs. the character that usually ends up crouchblocking in the corner seems kinda icky.
EDIT: Actually, now that I read and thought about it, yeah, Q vs. Makoto is just a broken matchup. Can’t believe I forgot about that. There is nothing Q can do. NOTHING.
As a Necro / Q player, id have to say Necro vs Chun or Q vs Yun / Makoto easily. Chun can just throw out b.hp all day beating all of Necros limbs and dive kicks and then just sit there with the lead. Q vs yun / makoto, well no description needed.
Q is pretty much everyone’s bitch when it comes to combos. There are a lot of characters that can do special combos on him that they can’t do on anyone else.
On top of that, Q has slow recovering moves, is tall and only has a select few set of moves (that are sometimes hard to land on a fast or defensive opponent) to start up combos or super art links/cancels with. To me, this is basically handing over opportunities to Yun (and his biggest strengths) over on a silver platter. A good Q has to have much faster reaction time and much better mind game abilities in order to beat a good Yun. Q vs. Yun is the hardest matchup IMO.
Coming from Q players I can’t really refute what they’re saying about Q v Makoto, since I guess they’re speaking from experience. But as a Makoto player I don’t really see the lop-sidedness of this matchup. It’s kind of funny how after thinking about it a little Q looks kind of like a Makoto without the dash and a shittier command-grab. IMO Q needs meter to make Makoto think twice about approaching and mixing up, so that’s one thing Q loses to. But I think if you anticipate jumps and dashes correctly he can f’up Makoto really bad, and then when he has meter the match could slow down a little to his favor. And it’s not like Makoto starts with a full SA2 meter + EX (this is where I hear “touche” in my head) so she needs more than 2 correct guesses (in the right position). Q can do what everyone else does when she’s packing: jump away or reversal super. You might still get hit/juggled but at least you won’t die. Makoto has a 'sizeable’advantage in theory, yeah, no doubt… but still.
I saw an old vid way back so my vote for most messed-up match is hugo v akuma. The only reason it was even a question in that vid was cus the hugo was very good and VERY patient.
Actually, Q being huge is an advantage in some ways, he can’t be crossed up in the corner in many occasions where other characters can.
Urien vs Twelve is a really stupid matchup, if Twelve mistimes his dashes or attacks in the air he eats free damage into Aegis setups. Probably worse overall than vs Ken if you’re not extremely skilled.
