"Maximum Brofist" The Kanji Thread

Classic Fighting Games Persona 4 Arena
101

Matchup stuff!
Lucky for me, my roommate is big into turtle strategies in fighting games, so he exclusively plays zoners. All I get to fight when I face him is Liz, Naoto, and occasionally Yuki. So here’s some anti-zoning tips/things I’ve learned.

VS. NAOTO
Sick of those traps and that pop gun? Let’s get to know this. I have managed to turn this into a very favorable matchup for Kanji. Here’s how.

WATCH THIS VIDEO!


PET taught me a lot in just a couple simple videos for dealing with Naoto shenanigans. This is a good video for studying up.

Naoto’s Traps
The bane of Kanji’s existence. Two big things to note here:
-DON’T AP NAOTO
-The traps can be broken!
Firstly, any Naoto player worth his weight in crap will ALWAYS set a trap above her to prevent random AP’s. Don’t AP unless you KNOW you’ve cleared her traps, which brings me to the second point: hitting Naoto or the traps will clear them. With this in mind, a pretty basic strategy for dealing with the whole, “Trap, backstep, trap” strategy is to continually jump forward and Air B, occasionally landing and hitting 5C. Both of these moves have big arcs that if they touch the traps, will clear them so you can advance forward. Just be sure to remain aware of Naoto’s movements so you don’t land on a gun shot.

Naoto’s Obnoxious Gun
Seriously, who designed this move? it’s full screen, multi-hits, knocks all the way back to the other end of the screen, and can be fired in just about every direction. There are a couple ways for Kanji to aggressively punish here.
-Up Close: Though this rarely occurs, when Naoto fires up close, she leaves a very brief window to be punished on block. Best move here is Kanji’s awakening super. Teaches Naoto to think twice before shooting you point blank.
-Mid-Screen: This is very punishable with Kanji’s AP, given a few conditions: 1) You’ve cleared all her traps, 2) You do it right at the start of your jump arc that had to start RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF NAOTO’S SHOTS. Otherwise, she’ll simply aim up and smack you out of the air.
Full-Screen: There’s a couple things you can do here. If they are spamming it hard, simply block a string of it, then immediately hit 8D to lightning them. If they’re being smart (eg firing bullets one at a time and aiming all over the place), it’s best to just move in with jumps and UPBACK. Once you’re in range, an air B chair hit into AP will punish Naoto’s gun if she still thinks she can get it.

JAMON Y QUESO Instant Kills
Naoto’s Hama-On (or whatever) fatal counter kills can be pretter scary, and what’s worse, she can move during them. Player’s not mindful of the fatal counter will often turtle until the super’s over for fear of an instant kill. What you need to know is that NAOTO CAN MOVE during these supers, and gets a free mix up on you. There is one good punish on it though: If she tries the black smoke version, you can turtle till she gets close, then use BURN EM TO A CRISP to punish her for her wreckless rush in.

Naoto’s Super Lame IK
I used to fear this until I realized the TARGETS DONT MOVE. Once she starts it, simply back up to about sweep range and STAY STILL. 90% of the time a target won’t appear right on you when you’re on the ground, and as soon as the way is clear, you can command grab her for free. Just don’t try to super, for some reason it won’t work during Naoto’s animation.

Corner Game
This is best place for Kanji to get Naoto for one additional reason: Naoto players will often try to wake up counter-move you to punish aggressive attacks. Learn to bait this with a delayed 214D and you will leave them on the floor for quite a while.

Disappearing Persona Thing
Naoto’s persona can disappear and reapper at her will, striking you for a little combo. However, if this combo is blocked, her Persona will peacefully float away, leaving her open to a jumping B which can be cancelled into an AP for a full punish on Naoto. Condition them to not use this attack and things will get less hectic. A big general tactic against Naoto is to try to edge them out of using more than one attack with punishes. Once they feel like only one thing will work and they do it over and over, the screen gets much less hectic and lets Kanji go nuts. I occasionally even punish everything but one move, which I intentionally let myself get hit by, so they’ll get locked into doing it and I can punish them for the assumption.

That’s all I can think of for now, I’ll try to do a couple other characters later, though they won’t be as in depth as this. Feel free to ask questions on this matchup and I can tell you what I know (which I feel like is a lot).

102

nice write up! but please remind me what AP stands for again? doesn’t ring a bell.

103

I believe Air Pounce which is what he’s calling J.214C/D. Crap i have no idea how this notation is supposed to be formatted.

104

AP reminds me of a term used by someone that tries to make everyone look dumber than him for not knowing what it is.

Please people, this game is pretty new, don’t toss out random abbreviations.

105

Sorry AP is short for Air Pounce (Kanji’s 214B “Bet Ya Cant Take This” move). I just called it air pounce because it was shorter, but then got tired of typing that so I abbreviated it. Not trying to be a snob, just trying to type faster.

106

Something to note is that Naoto can easily combo into Mudoon (5AAA > 236236D works generally 100% of the time), which if near a corner can be just as lethal as having 0 Fate Counters if you have no burst to get out of the impending SMP combo, so be careful that your corner strategy doesn’t end up biting you in the ass… literally.

In other news, really digging Kanji, definitely picking him up in addition to Naoto. For fun, I took him online to see how far I could get before the tactic of “End a combo near opponent then invinci-grab them” would stop working.

So far, I’m 95 PSR with a D+ Rank

Also, what’s a good strategy to deal with run away types? Ie. Chie keeping away until a do something unsafe to which she punishes me?

107

This is very true, Naoto can in fact combo into one of his IK’s. He can also use Mudoon as an anti-air counter.This is another reason why it is so important to keep track of your fate counter.

As far as dealing with general run away, There’s two things you can do:

  1. If their run away pattern of movement is predictable, you can read it and smack them with D lightning strikes. Once they’re paralyzed, they’re grounded and won’t be getting away anytime soon. Just watch out for moving attacks and persona hits!
  2. If they are bouncing back and forth to create a dangerous mid-screen situation, try approaching as safely ass possible with combinations of Air B and 5C. Remember you can delay the strikes on your C attacks as well. Try to use to bait your opponent into an attack, since they know a whiffed 5 or 2C is a free hit on your persona.
108

So in regards to 1, you want to hit D before you jump? Does it work like that?

109

You can D on the ground or in mid-air with any of the options (5, 2, or 8, though when on the ground 8 does force you to jump so you’ll be in the air for a little, but it should be negligible). I typically don’t jump when i do it (except 8D), but I can see the merit in doing so. If someone reads it and rushes you, I think you can still attack after calling Mikazuchi in the air, but i’m not sure.

PET actually has a pretty decent strategy of back air dashing to get gain distance before doing it mid air.

110

Is anyone else having trouble with Yosuke? I hadn’t played a single competent one til yesterday and now it looks like they’re starting to trickle out. His crazy mobility and quick moves seem to beat me air-to-air or mid screen on the ground a lot. Most of the time I can get in once with a well timed Air Pounce or jumping B, but I can’t keep him close. The only thing good I know about this matchup that I’m sure everyone has figured out is that Yosuke’s air-flip maneuver while you’re on the ground is a free DP everytime.

111

thing is, you didn’t even called it “Air Pounce” ONCE :wink:

and please don’t use that nick for it… it sounds awful ._.

112

CTRL+F shows the use of the phrase “air pounce” at least 4 times in his first post.

113

that’s on another page, that’s why I didn’t found air pounce at all.
To be honest I just saw his “first post”, I thought his second was the only one. it landed on a new forum page and he started it independently, too, so no reason to think there was another one. ^^

gonna check that one out as well now x)

114

Don’t know if anyone know this as well but Kanji’s sweep can destroy Naoto’s ground trap. Just use his to inch up toward a Naoto player when they put down the trap. Most of the time the sweep will land on the trap resulting of no damage. Other time Kanji will end up right in front of it having the trap expose. That way you normally don’t have to rely on his “Bet Ya Can’t Take This.” Just sweep toward her and use his D, base on the position she is at, to get a hit on her so all of her traps be deactivated.

115

That works, but so does 2A in my experience. And 2A is a bit less unsafe. If the opponent catches you sweeping traps, he’s probably going to shoot you at some point.

116

Naoto is female

117

I think he meant “the opponent” :wink:

118

Sorry just really dont want to type out “Bet Ya Can’t Take This” over and over, or BYCTT. Air Pounce was just easy and descriptive. If you’d like a better a nick feel free to suggest and I’ll start using that. I don’t want to say air grab because that implies something different.

I actually had to edit my posts several times to make sure I didn’t do this. I generally just default to “he” in my analysis because i think of the opponent, and just assign a general gender, he, just because it’s shorter than “she.” I switched them though so people wouldn’t get confused. :slight_smile:

Duly noted, and will definitely be using this in the future. I had no idea! Thanks :slight_smile:

119

I usually just call it an “air dive”. But I wouldn’t abbreviate it further, that just gets too confusing.

120

we should collect names for all his moves and start a poll x)

Gotcha is catchy enough, Cruel Attack (CA) / Cruel as well.

This will Hurt is too inconvenient, abbreviation TWH could do the job, but dunno.

Bet ya can’t take this. BYCTT :smiley: - nah that sounds awful too. “Take This (TT)” or “Dive Grab” as nick name work imo. I actually like TT the most, now that I see it.