yeah he used HD activations in ways that I never even thought about haha.
Hello all, my brother and I just picked up this game last week. Granted I suck at fighting games anyways, I feel especially awkward using Maxima, should I be jumping in and confirming a BnB (which I don’t know what to do anyways haha) or should I be poking with normals that have guardpoints hoping to cancel to vapor cannon C for a wall bounce?
And how and when should I be using his B and D versions of his command grab?
What do I do when cornered?
Okay, lemme try to answer that!
So for your first question: Both! You should always jump with some intention of getting a full combo. My method of choice is to get a cross up with full jump C (Body splash) and do a BnB. You don’t have to do that as j.D and j.B cross up as well so it’s easier to hit. You can also play more defensively. You need to be more prepared for the opponent though and that might take some practice. However, you can easily get some damage in with some meter if you learn when to guardpoint and with what. As well, you should learn what to cancel with in certain situations. When you use d.C as a guardpoint, keep in mind that d.C is ALREADY special cancellable. You can let the whole animation go through and hit someone and free cancel it into a special or even df+C. It’s a nice little option select for cross ups. You hold d.B and hit C. If you don’t GP them and they cross you up, you can press C again and it’ll hit them.
For neutral game though, you really want to abuse his j.CD. Remember, on block, your jump CD is special cancellable. So if you jump at someone, they block your jump CD, you can cancel it into qcb+A/C/AC, whatever suits your fancy. This helps a bunch because you gain meter, stay safe, and maintain pressure because they’re in blockstun.
For jump-ins, you are probably gonna want to use meter unless they did a jump CD. If they do a jump CD, chances are they did it early and you can do slow moves like his D Maxima press (Command grab) to get them. You can GP early jump-ins and use fast moves like EX Vapor Cannon or EX Maxima press to get some damage. If you’re GPing fireballs, cancel it into B command grab when you’re far away or A vapor cannon if they run after their fireball.
You use B command grab as a 1-frame punishing move. Unless they’re positive, too far away, or jump, you can usually react with this and grab someone. You use the D command grab to trick people. Both of these are cancellable after normals, but D moves you forward. You can setup really silly tricks like do a st.C and cancel RIGHT before they get hit with the second hit of close st.C, you’ll do the command grab. Any where in your string where they’re not expecting it, you can throw this out and they’ll run out of blockstun before you hit them. You can tick throw with d.A, d.B and run up to command grab them. This is where people get scared of your Maxima’s command grabs. Every time you grab them, you pin them to the wall. You can safe jump (Hop up and down) to get them to do a DP in response or you can not do the follow up and they fall to the ground. If that happens, you can set yourself up to jump OVER them and do a cross up, fake the cross up, do nothing, etc. You basically have total control over what happens next in that situation.
So, you want to get that grab off, a lot. It’s super cancellable too so you can get some easy damage using meter. It’s ONLY super cancellable so don’t go wily nilly with EX moves, that won’t work.
When you’re cornered, try not to get predictable. If you think someone is gonna stay in your zone and keep poking you on make up, grab him. If you think he’s trying to bait a grab with some sort of jump diversion, throw out df+C and cancel it into A vapor cannon. Keep wary of what they want to do or have done in the past. It helps a lot to pay attention to the player as much as the opponent’s characters/capabilities.
For the most part, st.A and st.C will be your best friends in the corner. Use st.A to poke people out of the air or gain ground. If they’re standing, and it hits, be ready to smack them with EX Vapor Cannon to gain back momentum. If they keep jumping at you, use st.C. Don’t wake up with normals. React. If they don’t even bother doing anything, you should grab. Maxima’s normals are slow and he barely has any guardpoint moves that cover lows. Good players will meaty lows to get in combos if they can help it. Don’t give’em that option, stay vigilant. Your whole goal in the corner is to get out an inch, you can bumrush the rest.
Thanks so much! I’ll be re-reading this post for a while, I’m so terrible at this game but I can’t put it down. I noticed a lot of your advice advocated using meter, so should I be putting maxima 2nd? If it helps I’m also trying to learn Clark.
Yeah, you should probably put Maxima second or last until you feel more confident with him. You can play him first, but then it becomes more aggro than defensive. He won’t deal much damage without getting a lucky jump-in or capitalizing on mistakes. Most of the time, if Maxima is first, he’ll use his long range normals to poke or throw out moves to keep you in blockstun/bully you to the corner. Also, first character Maximas tend to use the command grabs a lot more to get in for damage.