Maki Strategies and Matchups

Since most strategies and tricks are matchup-dependent, it makes sense to group the two together. Discuss anything useful in actual matches here, from specific tactics, to character-dependent move counters, to overall gameplans. The more specific you get, the better. It would be greatly appreciated if you took the time to test out everything you plan on saying in training mode to make sure that it works and to provide some numbers for stuff like damage and dizzy amount.

Other than that, try not to piss anyone off or start any flame wars.

I always thought the spin kick(KKK) was great move to get out of blockstrings, however…

-do not use it against people with safe fall, if you’re in the corner.
-a few times i’ve done it on my wakeup WHILE my opponent was jumping towards me. he somehow lands right when i get up, even though it looks like he’s still airborne.

Against a safefall Groove, getting a knockdown and following it up with a quick Run -> Slide is really good. Either you catch them with the slide, you whiff and you’re cool (and you have a 720 setup).

Against A Groove, when you see the PING, hold back and mash KKK. One of two things happen. KKK doesn’t come out and you block, and if there’s any hole in the CC, you win. KKK comes out, you win.

tired now. night night.

that reminds me.

another note for maki’s spin kick(KKK) move:

sometimes when you whiff jab/short and you hear the “ping” from the CC activation, mash on Kicks anyways. sometimes it’ll cancel into her kick of doom move anyways. i actually whiffed a s.fierce once, and still cancelled into spin kicks. this has to be done in the very first few frames of the whiffed normal though.

i’ve KKK’ed out of yamazaki’s lvl 2 grab super before, pressed Kicks after super had already flashed too.

Yeah, it’s kinda hard but you can cancel out of normals after a super move flash into a special and probably supers.

It’s a lot easier with Maki because all she needs is to mash kkk, but you can even do shit like dp with sagat and stuff.

Not sure if you guys already know about this, but Maki’s level 1 720 can be jumped out of. This makes it absolutely useless (on the ground) when you play against people who know that detail.

What characters do you people have the most trouble against? I’ll try to post stuff in response to questions, but I’m too lazy to think up of stuff on my own to post about…

i HATE fighting guile with maki. i noticed she dies pretty hard to characters that don’t have to chase her down.

i think she has a great match against rolento. sounds useless but a good rolento can run away until there’s meter then come in and punish. with maki i can really lock him down on the ground and fight him in the air as well.

i have a particularly hard time against certain sagat players.

for the most part, i dont’ have too much trouble against sagat players who never played against maki before, however a couple friends of mine have figured out how to keep maki out(at least when i get raged) w/ sagat. spam j.rh, jump back and do j.rh. roundhouse jump ins also beat out a lot of maki’s AA options(except for her KKK move of course). sagat’s j.rh is really safe against maki, since her kick super is crap if you do it outside of a combo. her 720 doesn’t have THAT much range to throw sagat out of j.rh. doing this pretty much kills all of my weird angle jump ins. and slowly moving in with pokes doesn’t work well against sagat.

the main tactic i use for now, is jumping back to the wall and doing the “faint” wall grab(qcb+lk), or doing late wall hop(qcb+lp) so get a really low to the ground air attack, but it still gives me a hard time to land my super.

has anyone else had this problem?
EDIT: i have difficulties against guile sometimes too. i do the same tactic against guile(late wall hops) so i can low-to-the-ground air attacks. regular jump ins on guile doesn’t work to well.

Guile gets me down sometimes too. You can AC out of blocked strings. The AC even though it’s her KKK move, doesn’t cost vitality. Her small jump goes far, and if you space it right your attack will beat a cr.hp attempt. That’s all I can say. Note: my experience vs guile is only against players that don’t RC the booms.

I think Maki has a bad matchup vs anyone who has a better poke than her st.mk
In all other cases, just:
Poke and AA (cr.hp) all friggin’ day.
Occasional crossup followed by whatever.
Wall tricks vs ppl that don’t know any better.

Story changes quite a bit when you’re packing heat (lvl3).

About bad matchups…cammy, sagat, blanka and vega.
I think her best way of dealing with them is getting the momentum by either smalljumping over, rolling through (hehe, not really) and KKK/AC’ing through pokes she cannot otherwise beat. Blanka and Sagat are pretty easy to crossup, and will often lend themselvs to those “omg, where is she gonna land?” situations.

Thing I just realised about the vs Cammy matchup:
RC qcf+p should be a great weapon (sorry K-Maki, you’ve allready got JD). Why?:

  • RC genko > poke
  • ??? RC genko > drill ??? I really can’t say, the hitbox should be able to reach low enough… Ignore this if you know it doesn’t work.
  • since Cammy hardly ever jumps (or at least completes her jump without divekicking) or rolls (it’s soooo slow) it should connect a lot.

Bad points are in abundance… including dangerous against JD/Parry, not usable when cammy is packing a smasher.

vs Vega
Get a lead, then play “Who’s the better runaway character?”

what groove do you guys think maki is best in?

my order would be k, n, and c.

I heard A-maki is pretty good, haven’t really seen it though (only version losing badly in SBO1). On paper my money would be on K-groove.

Sometimes I wonder if her hop is better than her run. What does she gain the most from?

Buktooch said something about Iyo’s Maki being the one that gains least from the switch to C-groove. I’m not disagreeing, but I think Maki’s only real dependance on groove specific features are:

  • many and/or stored Lvl-3
  • and maybe smalljump
    but that’s just me…

Other than that I think she could fit into ANY groove well. Even S-Maki is alright, bringing that whole safe kick-super thing into the picture.

I play N-groove, so I’m biased, but I think that’s probably her best groove overall because after popping a stock she can turn almost any situation into either 720 or “jappu-jappu-supah”. And since she’s such a badass battery, she’ll have two stocks in no-time.

here’s something i started doing recently.

against certain characters that has air to ground moves that can stuff out your AA normals cleanly, just use her KKK move everytime they jump, it’s better to lose some life and keep them at bay than to risk eating a counterhit—>combo of their choice.

characters that i do no hesitate to KKK against;
-chunli’s j.short
-yamazaki’s j.fwd

characters that i may or may not use KKK against when they jump:
-sagat(i’ll use normals if i see it coming early)
-sakura(sometimes sakura players will use j.rh, which stuff makis’ normals badly, but it’s rare that they use j.rh instead of dive kick or j.mk)

How useful is Maki’s command air grab (qcf+p)? Exactly how close do you have to be for it to connect, and will it grab a character that is slightly above or below her in the air or do they have to be level with her? Everytime I’ve chanced it, I’ve gotten it either stuffed, or it whiffs. Admittedly, I haven’t really played around with it a whole lot, but it seems as if you’ve got to be almost face to face with them in the air for it to hit.

Its not that useful… But If you do deside to go air to air combat, give it a try. They will be like “WTF”… Maki just grabed me? lol.

Its probally best to stay on the ground and just AA with s.fk,and c.fp, if you think their gonna jump at u.

The lp version has more range…?
So I would use hcf.lp, first.

you can get fancy points for using it.

i remember reading it somewhere, but the old maki thread is too huge to look through, so imma just ask it.

does the follow combos work?

c.jab, c.jab, s.short xx lvl 2 kick super.

or…

c.jab, c.jab, s.short xx lvl 2 punch super.

Hey V13. Thanks for the Aim. I got to remember to sign on more often.

c.lp c.lp, s.shortxxx level 2 kick super works… But god dam. That link is hard enough to connect with level 3, let alone level 2.

c.lp c.lp s.short xx lvl 2 punch super probally works on big cat’s? Need to check… But if u ever land 2 jabs it probally best to punch super after the second jab to get rid of the “fucking up factor”.

Ive been messing around wit c.short, c.short, punch super. The timing is funny though. Kind like sagats… but weirder.

Do u guys think that s-groove maki could prove to be affective?
I only use A & S groove, but I think maki is a good battery in A-groove
the custom I use takes about 7500 off the meter. (not too shabby)
(anti air as well)

???

Any opinions will be much appreciated.

well, maki doesn’t get many chances to punish with s.mk xx super(K groove helps alot), but with S, you’d have to look for opportunies to do lvl 1’s, which is almost not worth it and you can’t do it randomly since htere’s a lot of frame recovery i believe. lvl 1 grab super can be jumped out of as long as they aren’t doing a normal. so S kind of sucks…unless you have this great runaway tactic that allows you to charge bar enough times for a few lvl 3’s.

Yeah your right, I was practicing with her in S-groove last night, and to tell you the truth I think she sucks as well in S.

Her Dodge Punch move is her far Fp which is horribly slow, and might do more bad then good.

On a side note though her A groove is quite good.

How should Maki approach sagat and yama, any help will be appreciated.
By the way I use A-groove.

Fight On:karate:

Maki vs Cammy. How does Maki fight this slut? Its really hard to work around her st RH. I don’t think Maki’s roll is exactly the best to try and roll it. I could be wrong. And she definitely is advertising a loss by trying to jump it. Also does she have anything to stop ranged cannon drills outside of KKK. I don’t think the matchup is that bad on paper. I just have a brain fart vs her sometimes with Maki.