And before everyone immediately moves this to the Cole forum, know that I make up 50% of the users on that forum. I am posting here because all I really know this far is Cole and a few others that share no synergy with him, and I am hoping that the variety of character knowledge on the main forum can help me.
In a nutshell, Cole plays a strong zoning game, possessing a spammable projectile, one of the best anti-airs in the game, a nice slide, and combo enders that knock the opponent away, all with using little to no meter. His 750HP is mockable though and, combined with his terrible normals, make him mincemeat when someone gets in and starts piling damage. He also has trouble tag canceling well, with few moves that provide a safe way to do this.
His best matchups are against the likes of Ryu and Ken, but he has severe issues with those who have fast projectiles, large HP numbers, and high damage outputs, Sagat being a prime offender.
The other user on the forum is currently using Cole/Julia with good success, and we’ve come up with Cole/Steve as well. Any other ideas?
Some Cole matches for those who’ve never seen him in action (credit to Boodendorf):
[media=youtube]8s6YiORvJUw[/media]
P.S: When I make the Cole synergy topic later today after my own experimentations, I will give full credit to any information I find in this topic to the user who posts it.
I didn’t study much of the characters, but better than nothing right?
Here are a few combinations I thought of:
Cole/Ogre
Ogre seems like a pretty good meter waster type of character. I believe you can do insane damages with enough meter. He also got a nice mixup game, a teleport (which I’m sure we can find some combos with Cole/Ogre with it), a shoryuken and stylish combos. He’s got 1000 hps which is pretty good for Cole too.
Cole/Rufus
Rufus is a pretty good rushdown with really good damages and lots of hps (1050?). He’s got a divekick, his ex messiah, good pressure and mixup game and if he does have some synergy with cole with the cross tag in stuff he’ll have some huuge damages.
Cole/Juri
Juri is a pretty good character, with nice mobility, nice fireball game and nice damages. She below average in health though. Good pressure and good mixup game.
Cole/Guile
Pretty much a keepaway team and annoying as fuck team.
Cole/Abel
Abel seems to be a bit like Julia with good tools and… actually that char seems good everywhere. Good hps (1050) too and probably has some synergy.
Cole/King
A team I played with my friend, doing 2v1/2 in ranked and it worked rather well. Only problem is that his knee loop could only come in after either a launcher or a thunder drop cross tag in whatever.
I also thought of Cole/Asuka and Cole/Bob.
Sorry if it’s not really developped at all because, once again, I don’t know much about those chars.
No man, it’s really useful. Especially since we’ve come to a lot of the same conclusions. I pictured Ogre as a great secondary but I’ve never used him. He’s the first I’m going to try in training tonight. Besides, it’s like Cole and the Beast.
Abel was my second best character in SSFIV so I’ve been considering using him for a long time, but was worried because he’s such a great lead/battery. Which got me to thinking, I wonder if I would do best at my current level with a double battery team? I’m bad (ie not experienced) with big meter combos so I primarily use it for Cross Counters and punishing whiffed launchers with Cole’s Cross Art. I’ll do work on this later, it’d also let me play with most of my favorite characters since they all happen to be battery so far>>
P.S: Cole/Guile seems like a really fun team to annoy people with, but I am a little worried about how timeout works. If they calculate total HP, for instance, then a Cole team is at a severe disadvantage, and they could outstall your stall simply by sitting there and avoiding projectiles.
P.S: Any particular thoughts on why Cole/Bob? I actually have achieved moderate success with Bob/Cole before making Cole my battery because I’m profficient with both characters.
Well, if the time out is about how much lifebar, and not how much hp in numbers is left then it should work. Otherwise yeah, that’d be too bad.
Bob seems like a good rushdown character with frametraps, good mobility, good damages and good health like Rufus, which is nice.
I tried out stuff with Cole/Ogre in training mode, here’s what you can do with combos:
Starting with Ogre:
(works midscreen/corner) [412]j.hk, 9lk mk, s.hp xx lk dp xx cross cancel, s.hp xx HP lightning hook.
(midscreen only) [417] L/M/HK DP cross cancel s.hp xx EX shockwave, s.hp xx HP hook
(corner only) [494] j.hk, s.hp xx LK DP, s.hp xx LK DP cross cancel s.hp xx HP hook
(corner only) [533] j.hk, s.hp xx LK DP, s.hp xx LK DP cross cancel s.hp xx LP shockwave cross cancel s.hp xx qcb HP
Starting with Cole:
(anywhere on screen) [338] thunder drop cross cancel s.hp xx qcb HP
(anywhere on screen)[391] j.hp, s.hp xx HP amp cross cancel cr.mk, cr.mk xx qcb HP
(anywhere on screen)[437] thunder drop cross cancel s.hp xx LK DP cross cancel s.hp xx HP hook
(anywhere on screen) [482] j.hp, s.hp xx HP amp cross cancel cr.mk xx super
(corner only)[516] thunder drop cross cancel s.hp xx LK DP cross cancel s.hp xx LP shockwave cross cancel s.hp xx qcb HP
good shit bro,I will use… Remember…cole.is.NOT.about combos. sure, optimum damage is good, but he’s more like Guile, Sim Ogre… Twelve, Kuma or even 12/Q. Make them eat your damage, then…they:’(
Of course, but having combos is really important if you ever land the starting hit, and remember that in that game you can tag out your character safely during a combo(launcher, cross cancel) which is good too. He may not be about combos, but you can’t play without having decent combos.
Kazuya is a very strong character, so I do not see any problem with the team. From a more critical viewpoint though, what exactly is Cole doing on the team? Kazuya plays a fast rushdown, whereas Cole looks for Zoning and air negation. I have seen Cole used effectively as an anchor, so I am not so worried about that.
So yeah, I see nothing wrong with the team, especially if you can use both characters, but there is a bit of a conflict of interests. If you can adapt the two different styles dynamically it could be fun.
I figured as much. As I said, there’s no problem with that team, go forth and make it work. Just remember that Kazuya is aggressive and Cole is defensive. If you play Cole like Kaz, you’ll die.
I do believe it could work, like SamuelVimes said. I’m going to record a few Cole/Ogre combo when I have time, just found out you can hit with cl.hp after HP amp combo xx cross cancel with Ogre.
It seems that I found a little something with Cole and any partner that has a shoryuken:
You can combo a thunder drop right after a shoryuken, no matter where on screen.
Now, we all know that Cole has 4 ranges with his TD: LK, close, MK, medium, HK, far, EX, tracks (badly). Basically what you can do is after your partner’s shoryuken:
Shoryuken cross cancel Thunder Drop LK/MK/HK, cr.mp xx HP hook. It’s an easy close to 400 damages bnb for only one meter.
Now here’s the thing that you must know: to land the cr.mp after the drop, you need to see which version of your partner’s shoryuken and which version of thunder drop are compatible. Here’s an exemple with my Cole x Julia team:
MK shoryuken cross cancel MK thunder drop, cr.mp xx HP hook.
Her LK shoryuken doesn’t launch high enough and makes Cole thunder drop whiff while her HK shoryuken launch too far for MK thunder drop to link into cr.mp, but too close for HK thunder drop to link cr.mp.
So you’ll have to go into the lab to see what works with what. Oh yeah, another thing, if nothing is compatible or you still want a combo after a shoryuken that won’t work with thunder drop you can do this:
shoryuken cross cancel jump (wait a bit) hp, cr.mp xx HP hook.
You’ll lose around 20 damages but heck, it’s still close to 400 damages so it’s good.
Here’s a combo sample I just did:
Starting with Julia (1 meter):
[502] Swift Step Explosion, forward hp, forward mp>mk, cr.hp xx MK rising kick cross cancel MK thunder drop, cr.mp xx HP hook.
Starting with Cole(2meter):
[438] j.hp, s.hp xx HP amp combo cross cancel, foward mp>mk, cr.hp xx MK rising kick cross cancel MK thunder drop, cr.mp xx HP hook