I’ve been thinking of switching to baraka, i like his moveset. But I just cant figure out how to properly use him… so far from what I can tell he is good at medium range as a aggressively defensive fighter using mixups to control the rhythm and distance. His combos seem very unreliable online (where I play 99% of the time) and you can get more damage by using his meter with enhanced moves instead of the Xray. His specials seem best to be used as counter attacks and not leading attacks and I’ve had better luck using his generic combos and 1 to 2 hit strings instead of long combos also.
But actually applying him consistently well in battle is the hard part, wtf do i do? He is so damn slow, he doesn’t have a single good poke compared to the rest of the cast and everything he does is extremely punishable.
I feel he is a really unique character and probably has his own very individual play style with possibly potential threats no one else has. one of the reasons I would like to main him.
Everyone says he’s a rushdown character and that you have to stay in your opponents face at all times. But I don’t get it. Baraka’s pokes are so slow I don’t even see how he would succeed with a rushdown approach.
Personally I just play him at mid range and when I’m close I do nothing but mixups. Of course if I land a jump punch I will go for max damage combo punish, but other wise I keep it simple.
Blade Charge and Chop Chop are the best moves to condition your opponent into blocking or jumping. Blade Spin is your anti-air and wake up option most of the time. His projectile is way too slow, you should only use it when opponent tries to jump away from you or when they try to run away. Obviously you can’t really use it vs teleport characters.
Blade Charge is also a great counter against slow start up moves. So you can treat the special as if it was Dhalsim’s long arms, so a quick poke with great range basically. Ex version has armor and goes through projectiles so it’s very good vs heavy zoners.
You either end your combos with Blade Fury/Blade Shard if you want to stay close and rush them. Or with Blade Charge/Blade Spin if you want to send them in the corner.
yeah baraka is pretty shit at full screen long range type distances, he’s mainly a threat up close and at mid screen distance away from the opponent. im talking the perfect distance to blade charge unsafe anythings the opponent does. staying at midscreen and getting a blade charge seems safe at times because if they block it ur not so far that it just whiffs then u get punished anyway and if u do it point blank u punished by basicly everything. but sometimes it feels like theres a sweet spot where if i can just get the tip blocked im unpunishable by most characters specials. or im just talking shit idk.
but u mainly want to keep close to mid screen distance with baraka at all times, he’s to easy to get zoned. fool needs a teleport like almost everyone else in the game.