on the topic of A-Hibiki without trying to get too in-depth:
A-Hibiki fighting Vega is almost a wash. He outpokes her pretty free, punishes most slashes and run slashes with c.mp or slide, can anti-air her pretty solidly between s.RH, air throw, or my personal fave, jump back mashing. In addition, vega’s coupled with his ability to zone Hibiki forces her to do random ass RC slashes trying to shank the fool, and then he can start educated guessing his rolls, get some slides in there, etc. It starts to go downhill. Hibiki really needs to get on him, jump on his head, mix him up and kill him fast. Its an uphill battle though, because vega has now cut off pretty much all her most effective forms of closing the gap. PLUS her throw range sucks, doesn’t help at all against someone like Vega (claw). OH OH and she has no good wake-up except RC run slash, which Vega easily circumvents jumping straight up, because thats what the motherfucker is doing anyway.
Sak doesnt have too much of an advantage imo. Best thing here is to not get in that range where again, random rolls get you, because in this match if Sak gets the roll short short upper, again you dont have a good wake up, and Sak is gonna make you lose like a third of your guard bar on the wakeup at the least. Again, only good wake-up options out of activate are RC run and block…not the position you want to be in against someone eats at guard bar like that. BUT, playing her just outside of Sak s.RH usually works out better, but turns into a waiting game (yeah A-hibiki is often like this I guess). In this case at least you can throw out some slashes for pressure, and jumping on Sak’s head for ambiguous cross-up works a lot in this fight.
Cammy rushes down A-hibiki. She can walk in and out of your poke range pretty comfortably waiting for that slash. If she doesn’t block the slash she walks in kicks you in the face, or worse, throws you. Now when Cammy knocks hibiki down, she can walk up and start mashing fierce. Here is what hibiki can do:
A: Try to RC and get thrown
B: Block two fierces then cammy starts dancing again.
If cammy is dancing and Hibiki must take the initiative, Cammy can pretty much walk backwards all day and snuff most of Hibiki’s forward moving shit, so you are relegated to slowing trying to catch up, possibly eating random ass cannon arrows, blocking RH’s and so on. I usally see this one as an uphill battle…and this is just when cammy isnt running/parrying/JD’ing.
Versus bison, this match has come along, since the properly done hibiki bnb combo (short short short (slowly now) jab qcf + MP) is not punishable by any Bison without a level 3 charged (test it in training mode if you want, if you see reversal pop up on your scissors kick after blocking/eating the combo with bison, and hibiki doesn’t block it (being set on auto-block), then you didnt the combo slow enough. It isnt all that hard though. Even uncomboed slashes arent completely unsafe against him, hibiki just needs to watch for when he has charge. He is less succeptable to the aimbiguous crossup game because when he gets tired of your jumpy shit, he’ll RC psycho crusher, thats gonna hurt.
Besides these 4, A-hibiki does pretty well against blanka and sagat, if they are not running and short jumping. Its a little hard for Hibiki to pull one of them off of her because of her slow anti-airs, so if you block a short jump you’re prolly going to have to block another, or some dash up somethings. She has good stuff going in the fight against them both, but because they are so powerful, and because of her low stun, they can turn the match around very quickly, a task that is far more daunting for someone like Hibiki.
Now of the top 4, R1 Hibiki (in the 1 or 2 position) is going to come across cammy’s, vega’s, bison’s often, which can be problematic. If you make A-Hibiki your R2, now you have a low-vitality, low-stun anchor, low power anchor character, against normally someone like a blanka or a sagat, who even if they are not running, can afford to eat a few slashes or fierces, trying to get up in your grill. I know blanka doesnt get a lot of damage off any particular poke, but a low fierce from him does way more than of her normals. Actually I think it does more than the slashes too. So she has lots of strong points, but just those general weaknesses, plus she’s just overrall weak against K/P grooves anyway (I asked Bas why he didn’t play her, as I’d heard he planned on picking her up. Check me out I’m name dropping!).
In summary, don’t play hibiki, especially R2 Hibiki, ESPECIALLY R2 A-hibiki, unless you have a death wish, or unless you are gonna get hella crazy with it.
If you DO have a death wish, or are crazy with it, then we can talk.
BKT,OTK,SKI!!!