godlike ground pokes (especially far D which is almost impossible to outfootsie/whiff punish due to him being FUCKING AIRBORNE during it), godly jumpins that almost never lose to mexican uppers, 4 ways to fuck with his jump arcs (so you almost always have to second guess whether you want to dp or not), safe specials that are hard to whiff punish and own plasma, great reversals and antiairs, instant command grab which gives crumple knockdown into safejump/ambiguous roll mixups + comboing out of ex version, comboable airgrab that leads to safejump/roll mixup, death combos for minimal cost, grabs that leads to death combos
he literally is at an advantage vs every other character in the game and i have no idea why it has taken me so long to pick him up
I think you’re making him out to be more than he is. He’s good but he’s not top tier. Good options but not amazing damage and his lock down has some holes in it. I think a lot of people lose to Beni just because they don’t know the matchup that well, just like any other fighter.
Just a little advice for players just starting out or your average player. I’ve shared this with many of my friends and people trying to learn the game. This is my opinion on roughly how KOF should be played, and how to manage meter, as meter management is very important.
My opinion right now is that everyone I play is pretty reckless. I see meter wasting moves thrown everywhere. It ranges from full screen DM to wake up DP, DM. Roll cancelling, CD Blow back, or the worst offender, Random Neomax… (Note: That is 3 bars and full drive…down drain) A DP now and then is OK. I’m guilty of doing it, but if the person I’m playing adequately punishes me, I most likely won’t do it again. Some people just don’t have the discipline to control themselves from doing wake up moves, though. KOF is a fast paced game so I understand if you want a quick get the f**k off me. Same thing is to be said about CD Blow Back (1 stock to use) I see people constantly using this. It’s good but when you use 3 meters in a match doing this because you can’t deal with pressure, that’s a problem. It really helps to learn to anti air poke or DP on reaction. Now roll cancelling (1 stock) CAN be used as an alternative to CD blow back, but it’s mostly used to punish what are other wise unpunishable block strings. Example with K’ (crouch b, b, qcf A, frwd b) Roll cancel to punish the string if the opponent commits to the forward B. On to EX moves. I see EX moves being thrown around as well.The usefulness of EX moves vary by character. I understand the use of EX moves if you don’t have a high damaging HD character, or you’re not at a comfortable level to perform HD combos mid match but try not to waste these so much unless you hit confirm or know it has special properties. Now some characters don’t have fancy HD combos, and some don’t even need them, they deal enough damage with a basic drive cancel to DM, EX, Neomax, etc. Everyone has the potential to do good damage. (Except Leona, she’s horrible. lol =P) Lastly, go into training mode and practicing basic hit drive cancels or HD’s into DM, Neomax, etc. I feel like not everyone knows what they want to do once they land a hit or about to punish. Find a full target combo for each character and remember it. Simply practice your hit confirms.
Sorry for the long post. Feel free to put in your two cents. =] KOF da best game ever. Highly underrated. Don’t let it die.
Man, if Beni ain’t no thang, then please tell me what I need to do to counter him.
Every time I see him on someone’s team, I hope that they don’t really know how to play him and just put him on the team because they heard he was good.
anybody halfway decent at this game knows hes retarded. the fact that you say he has no damage says something in itself, when he’s probably tied for most economical damage for the meter he spends. he literally has a death combo for 1 stock, and a bit over 50% drive. same as joe, except he gets it off of both normal throw and ex command grab too
I figure you should kind of keep a look out for patterns and openings. Like some people want to go for that corner combo, some like to set up cross ups. Once you catch them slipping, let loose with your options. He can be pretty safe, that’s a problem, but if you look out for his more powerful options, you can counter the strategies.
I also think having light normals that hit mid instead of either high or low is useful. Like Kula, all her normals are not duck-able. This means you can pressure and cover their hop space. You really don’t want Benimaru in the air so cover his escape. Keep wary of his EX command grab as well. For one, it’s a free combo, but more so than that, it’s also an opportunity. For example, using Kula, if you know that they normally use his 1F command throw when they’re being pressured with run-up lights, make sure that you’re properly mixing in sweeps and hops in there. Like 3S, once people have meter, you have to start playing differently. So you’ll have to treat him like Daimon and keep anticipating it. Once they see one option won’t work, they’ll either get desperate or switch strategies. Either way, that’s good for you. Play the neutral and pressure game, mix it up once or twice to keep them guessing. Play against the player really, gauge their patterns and look for ways to counter them.
Anyone who doesn’t see Beni as a top character in this game hasn’t played a good one yet. He has literally every tool, and as rogueyoshi said, his damage output for resource cost is really strong. The fact that he doesn’t require a ton of resources but can build a lot of meter on his own means he’s also very flexible and can fit on almost any team setup. He’s not broken, nor is he braindead easy, but once you understand all the weapons he has and how to use them he is an absolute monster in this game. You can spend hours in training mode learning how to shut down J.D at it’s various angles, and you may still not have a consistent way to slow it down outside of staying out of Beni’s ideal jump in range. It’s that good.
Rogueyoshi says it all here pretty much, but the tool most of us worry about is his command grab as it has stupid recovery and you can cancel to it out of everything pretty much.
I hate to ride the bandwagon, but Benimaru is fucking ridiculous. Even half decent ones can wreck your shit, so long as they have the HCB-F motion down.
I think Far D being “airborne” is overhyped. I’m full jumping over his Far D and hitting him with a jump-in into a combo without hit resetting him. Then I play against him 98 style and his stuff isn’t that bad. Ground and Air Raijinkens are pretty punishable if you do some lab work, he no longer has the old j.CD to help put people into blockstun sooner within his hop arc (so he gets even harder wrecked by reaction DPs), and safer Command Throw whiffs is just an old school property he used to have so that doesn’t really change things.
He’s good, but he’s not cheap. He has tools that stomp scrubs but he’s far from braindead and far from being godly. The only thing that really works out for him in XIII is that grounded anti-air hitboxes are weaker/shittier so he gets away a bit more freely using j.D than he did in the past. Stuff like Kyo’s cr.C would eat Benimaru alive in 98 and now it trades or loses in XIII.
I’ve tested multiple times and I’ve never seen Benimaru go into a hitreset when hit out of st.D. It certainly is one of the better sobats in the game since it recovers fast and has a nice range, but it’s not unbeatable and you can even find the right range to above it with a horizontal-vertical attack like most j.CDs. Grounded Raijinkens feels better than before, but most characters have at the least the option of sweeping him or timing a special move to whiff punish him, and if you hit him out of the active frame you get a counterhit which could be used to lead in to some wild shit if you play around. Air Raijinken isn’t as menacing as it looks since it doesn’t build meter, and while it can alter hit aerial trajectory you can look into punishes as Laban said, but any fast horizontal attack like King’s hcb+D will work on reaction every time. Similarly, Iaigeri is punishable on block with King’s said move and others should have answers though it may take meter to do so, and the C Raijinken is pretty iffy on block too, and really that’s the one he’ll wanna use in case his cr.B does hit so he can get the knockdown.
j.D is better than it has historically been, but I believe the secret to beating it is to either DP it, walk/run forward before doing a mexican upper, or try air-to-airing him. Also it seems that it’s primarily full jump D that’s a bitch to deal with, since from a hop it’s easier to anti-air him earlier, though you’ll still need to watch out for any cross ups since they eat cr.Cs alive. Air-to-airing or backdashing even is a decent option since even if you take the hit reset, you wont eat much damage and then you may even be able to set up Benimaru to do j.CD and blow that up with a low.
Collider mixups are about the same as ever, you just gotta know and assess the situation.
By the way, I’m not seeing the airthrow followups since he’d definitely not getting a tight safejump off of it, nor a safe forward roll.
And due to the overwhelming requests for Benimaru and Yuri counter strategies, I’ll get something in the works.
Benimaru is a damn good character, but not broken or anything. He’s not even really scary without meter. To me, he is the current character that many players can’t seem to find an answer for. I see other characters that haven’t been winning as much yet, like maybe Mr. Karate and Yuri, being far more dangerous in the long term but that’s just my opinion. For now, it’s all perspective based on who you play in your local area and what characters are successful. It will evolve a bit after some of the next few major tournaments happen. Things typically happen in this way in a game’s competitive lifecycle.
his far D doesn’t have THAT much recovery… if you’re landing normal jumpins on a beni like that then it means you had to jump super early, which is not a reaction counter, but rather an anticipation counter (meaning you had to make an ESPECIALLY good read).
him not having a jumpin that he can do especially early in a jump to avoid reaction dps isnt a problem since he has 3 other good aerial approaches (j2D, air 236A/C) which need their own counters. meaning, the burden is more on you to guess whenever he jumps.
not only does the command grab whiff actually lets him shave frames off of his ground pokes, but the recovery on a raw one is so good that you can antiair attempts to jump out of italmost every time
beating this character is about SEVERELY outguessing them. i mean beating any character is about making better choices, but the odds on everything he does is pretty stacked in his favor
Yeah, I don’t even super jump. I just full jump and it’s all good. I guess I make good reads. No big deal, just have to play good footsies to win against him. He has to be ready to commit to a hop forward to air to air me which will lose to reaction DP, or he could neutral hop or back hop and I don’t have to worry about anything. So his best reaction option is doing a reaction DP himself but that shit isn’t safe at all unlike 98-ish status. So I feel no issue with him there. I have to DP him or he DPs me.
Yeah, and all those 3 other good options still lose to reaction dps. You won’t randomly throw out dp if you see him hop upwards before he even reaches the apex of his hop. If you see him do a drill or raijinken outside of your DP range, then you just don’t DP. If he does that shit in your DP range, your DP will more or less win (EX Iori for example.)
Yeah, then counter poke his run back in, make good alt guard reads, or walk back/back dash. It’s not like his command throw has big range and general Throw invul off of Oki and etc. is larger now. The command throw still is not that different from 98 status and it’s something I dealt with fine without problem so it’s not really much of an issue, even in this game. Like in 98 he could do cl.D xx command throw or f.B xx command throw on block and be safe. No different here.
So fighting Benimaru in this game is like “So what?” status. He has nothing new that makes him “godly.” He’s just 98 Benimaru with a less safe DP. What’s different is just mostly damage-output and what not (Drill into Command Throw, corner loops, Drive/HD Stuff.) To outplay him is playing good footsies, SF style footsies.
Not sure if this has been posted before, but this site has a partial list of frame data. It’s in Japanese, but I presume Google translate will help you understand most of it. If not, feel free to leave a note and I’ll see if I can translate it.