You can hop Saiki’s projectile with most characters. A few can just hop it due to their higher hop arcs, like for Shen it’s free. Otherwise you’ll wanna practice and find a jumping normal which shrinks your hitbox so that you can hop over it. With Iori and King, their j.B is a horizontal kick that raises their feet/lower body higher into the air so that their vulnerable hitbox doesn’t scrape the fireball. Once you can start hopping it, you can even beat and bait his qcf+A > qcf,qcf+K traps if you hop on reaction fast enough.
Some can go under it by shrinking or sliding, too. Kyo can sweep underneath it.
bit of a weird question but i noticed that in japanese climax matches, all the players are choosing the SF-style button layout. were these people not players of the older KOF games, or did they switch layouts because they think the newer one is better for XIII?
I think it has always been preference. I played older KOF’s that I owned on home consoles as SF layout. However, when I lost them(dont want to talk about how I lost them, they were stolen… story for another day) and got emulated KOF’s, the ABCD confused me on which button was which so I played it Neogeo style. Ever since then, I have played Neogeo in KOF. I like the fact that SNK gave players that option, it was actually in vanilla KOF13 as well. The arcade dump I had actually had the option of letting you choose between the two layouts but it had to be enabled through the system options. IIRC, SBO used that option too during the vanilla 13 tourney.
Also, I am thinking about giving some more insight onto what options Claw Iori has after Maiden Masher. He has some safejumps against characters and actually has a frame trap against the ENTIRE cast after any Masher. Gonna look more into it. He has about 5 options and all of them are stupid good and pretty scary.
Would one of those options be an immediate qcb+B after Maiden Masher? When qcb+B’s frame recovery ends as the opponent raises up, C. Iori has enough frame advantage to do just about anything before they can attack which forces them to block.
Okay, Clark’s step seems to scare a lot of people. Now the question is why don’t more people use it at tournaments? Could the tourney players know how to counter it 100% of the time or is it a case of them simply not knowing what to do with it, just like when you see Hwa’s not using Drunk Mode.
Yes sir.
There are also:
-Run slightly, super jump C crossup. This is kinda hard to time, but regardless this maybe the best option because if you fuck it up, opponent will most likely roll.
Empty Hyperhop into a low
Empty hop into command throw
qcb+B, then s.A or s.C. C frame traps but you can’t get anything off of it unless you HD, which is hard to do with frametrap C.
Run cr.B. This is what I think is the best option along with the first one I listed. It is a STRONG frametrap. So you can confirm this into a s.C and if they roll on wakeup the C will hit them cleanly.
Run then jump taco.
Run hop taco(fake), command grab. If you hop after the run, the taco will whiff and since his command grab is 8 frame startup, if will outlast the small throw invul. they get from holding back against the fake taco.
Clark’s step is scary as fuck, but in a tourney, I just whiff normals to stop it if I know he tries to do it. However, whats stupid is when Clark is in. The Clarks I play will do a s.CD(lower body invul. AND HE IS CONSIDERED AIRBORNE) then dash afterwards. This option is good because:
Scares opponent into jumping because they think think a backbreaker is coming. If he dashes afterwards is he at so much frame advantage.
IF they block the s.CD, the dash is so fast that Clark can do B+Backbreaker to eat a so called “punish.” Clark is about -6 doing s.CD into f+BD but to react on a dime to it is impossible unless you know it’s coming.
If the opponent knows the s.CD>f+BD is coming, they will jump. Well, Clark has an airgrab and he can snag them.
TBH, you just can’t let Clark get in. You gotta go HAM on him or lame him out. Once he is in, he can damn near end the game fast.
As for Hwa, even drunk Hwa has some bad problems. Drunk Hwa is indeed crazy, but character’s with air grabs eat up Drunk Dragon Tail mixups all day. I have to say though, Drunk Hwa shits on zoners so bad. Dragon Kick drunk has like 15 invul. frames so he can plow through anything midscreen and punish. However, I think that a smart Hwa will learn to mix it up. So far, even Romance and Mago’s Hwa is just on the playstyle of getting Dragon Tail mixup and get 600+ easy. I think this is hindering him. Normal Hwa is already + frame advantage on almost every poke normal he has, and they damn near double while drunk. I would poke my opponent, start the Dragon Backbreaker scare THEN go for the Dragon Tail mixups because then your opponent would start to alternate guard.
I’ve used Clark’s step outside of s.CD a few times. It catches them off guard, especially if you’re playing footises with Clark’s s.D and s.C. It’s definitely not something to do constantly, but it’s more of a ‘SURPRISE!’ yomi tool outside of using it with CD.
Drunk Hwa doesn’t have much in the way of bad matchups. A lot of people don’t know how to punish D Dragontail in drunk mode though. D Dragontail in the corner is fucking brutal.
Sorry if others know about this already, but I thought it was neat.
I was messing around in mission mode with Mature and found out that if you QCB B for Metal Massachre and press A or C twice you will dream cancel without having to put a QCB motion for Deathrow.
I don’t know if it counts as a phantom button input or phantom motion input or if just doesn’t count as an input at all.
Edit: Checked in practice mode and it doesn’t show any extra inputs.
I can do it everytime in trial mode, but in practice mode it seems random. It also needs like 3 or 4 hits in practice mode for it to come out, so that mode it’s more along the lines of mashing.
I have more success with QCB B then C instead of QCB A in practice mode.
I think it’s glitch, then again I’ve only tried it in those two modes.
I just alt guard because doing step is pretty stupid, especially from st.CD, and I get to block anything he does afterwards and still am locked in blockstun to avoid command throws and I get to punish for free. Best way to use step is to burst-get-in around a whiffed normal like in 98um’s Step in Extra mode, but running or punishing with a Far C/D into HD is just as good.
The only best thing I can think of using step for is hit-confirming off a successful sweep then going into Step then setting up for a mix-up upon an opponent that tech rolls and sacrifices throw invulnerability on recovery, then go for Clark’s HCF+D.
I did some testing to see if doing D SAB after a successful Sweep is doable. I set the dummy to mash AB. So I tried it and what you have to do is do Two Steps and here’s the weird thing. Sometimes D SAB will connect and sometimes it will whiff. I don’t know the frame data after a quick roll, but that’s just from testing shit out for 20 minutes. I assume after quick roll that they’re free for such and such amount of frames. However, if I did s.D into SAB or cr.B into whatever it would land consistently.
Another weird thing I discovered is that sometimes, roughly 1 out of 5, if I do Step I sometimes get s.D instead. And this is me hitting B&D Macro so I don’t know why that happens.
I have a few questions. I play leona and she’s difficult for me but I can’t drop her because she’s too sick. When charging for consecutive back forward- down up - back forward combos, how do you do it without breaking the charges? Whats the secret behind- low kick, standing punch , down up charge attack? And who is a good leona player that I can watch vids of to get a good idea of her neutral game?
the only time that you use low kick standing punch is, I believe, in the trial combo:
cr.BBB st.A _d, u+AC
Honestly, I wouldn’t do this combo, she does better damage of cr.BB st.B f+B qcf,hcb+P, which requires no charge tricks.
But now we’re on the subject:
you just do cr.BBB _d, u+AC but you hold AC. Don’t time the EX Moon Slasher as a cancel but as a chain cancel, and st.A will come out which cancels directly into moon slasher, it’s crazy but it’s true. It’s one of the KOF buffering tricks that I have discussed in my article on dreamcancel: http://dreamcancel.com/2011/11/12/whiff-cancel-tutorial/
Has anyone spoken about Shen, yet?
Shen is supposed to be one of the best anchors to have on a team. Seems to deal with projectiles pretty well and has a nice damage output… What are everyone’s thoughts on Shen? Is he good for any other team position?
Also… what is everyone’s general strategy when they utilize a character? What moves do you use and why? Does anyone utilize the Guard Cancel Roll/Blow back?
Funny thing, I can’t think of one character that needs 5 bars to max cancel.
That being second I think the only difference between a persons mid and anchor should be whichever one they are more consistent with in landing their max cancels.
When it works out, I try to just use HD and no more than 1 bar on my point to conserve most or all of my meter for my mid and anchor
ALWAYS Shen first or last. Shen is a tank, good on point because he can get some momentum and start the mind games, just overpower the point char of the opponent and by the 2nd round you have 100% drive for easy 600+ damage depending on meter. He does really well against Clark thanks to Autoguard C(try and hyerhop CD Clark, I DARE YOU! >:(). Overall he is better Last. I dont put him second because if he dies and wastes all the meter from your point and his self, your anchor has little resources to work with. The only way to run Shen second is if you are Bala(LOL), or your anchor does not need meter to be stupid good like Benimaru, Mr. Karate, or a character with good Oki/Yomi like Takuma, Clark, etc.
A lot of people may not notice, but guard cancel moves are extremely good especially against zoning characters like King. Thanks to GCShift/Roll, a lot of blockstrings are NOT safe on block. Here are some I know by hard:
King’s venom strike after slide(cancel the slide and its a full blown punish) or close venom strike(if you cancel it and you are in range, its a full punish)
Kyo string: 2B,2A, 3D, qcf+p(cancel the 3D and its a punish. Actually you can cancel the 2A and if Kyo already did the 3D input, it is punishable too)
Maxima’s Vapor Punch/Canon.
Andy string: 5B >5D > Hisouken(fireball). Cancel the 5D and its punishable.
However, do NOT do GC Shift against + advantage moves. I found this out the hard way against Ralf. For people like Ralf, just to GC Attack.
Like I said before, Ralf’s qcf+C is about +6 on block(Ralf’s frame data to be released), if you GC Shift/Roll, he can frame trap it with a 2B REAL DEEP and you can’t DP it. If you GC Attack, you’ll knock him away from you.
I use GC Shift a lot in King matches. I use it when I know the blockstring that I am about to be put in is unsafe.
Been thinking about Clark and how he works best. He doesn’t get the most bang for your buck in terms of meter usage and damage where unless you’re Bala you need at least 3 bars and full HD to get around 750 damage. Which isn’t bad but not great either. The problem is getting in with Clark and that leads me to think of other ways to use him.
I think the best way to use meter with Clark is to spend it on his EX Gatling to blow up fireball zoning. And (pardon me, I don’t know the exact terminology) for Guard Cancel Rolling and Guard Cancel CD (Basically block their attack and hit CD). Guard Cancel CD can be very effective if Clark has them in the corner. And if they quick roll I think you can use Step (B+D) and grab them with C or D or do D SAB.
I’ve tested it and doing Sweep and then Step (x2) into C or D grab is legit. 180 damage that leads to hard knock down. Plus his sweep is probably one of the fastest in the game and he has ways of sneaking it in off of cr. or st. B. Shoutouts to Laban for pointing it out.
At mid-screen range I think Clark has to play footsies with his s.C and s.D to AA. I think Vulcan can be used if you think they;re going to jump in. Would be risky against a Karate with his EX grab but I don’t know how whiff-punishable it is with every character.
His best jump in is A and to an extent B, B will hit low if you time it. They both seem to beat a lot of the best Air-to-Air attacks from the best characters out there, namely Karate, Beni, Kyo, Iori, and Billy. Clark’s hop A will either beat or trade Billy’s cr.C.
I have a bug up my ass to create a Clark Bible. I think we’re just starting to figure out how to use him.
