Sempuu Bu is a really good assist, especially with hyper armour, I know it’s been said before but the effectiveness of it cannot be underestimated. As a poster mentioned above, she has all the pieces to be a very, very good character in the game, the only knock I have on her is her speed. I can’t seem to figure out why they made her so slow. I know a lot of her normals have some serious reach, but damn, she moves like Hulk.
Honestly I hope there isn’t a patch that changes existing characters, I’m kind of tired of those, and this game has plenty of room to develop.
If there was anything I’d like to change, it’d be to remove the randomness element. I have no idea what they were thinking with that, but it would be nice if Tenraiha and especially item throw weren’t quite so unpredictable.
M and S cross up, M does it better.
Actually, Hulk can move faster than she can. WAY faster, actually. I also have a gripe about the damage output I see without meter [and to a degree even with it…,]. Considering the fact that her ground throws are combo igniting, and her Command grab means a free super landed, I’ll have to see. I guess I’ll have to see if I still like her a month from now, as right now, she’s my second or third favorite character. Dormammu is first.
protip: Always dash after EVERY flying screen you do upon landing. I recommend using 2 attacks for the dash. If they’re cornered, you can dash through them, and super them TWICE, if not you can get closer so your super hits better.
As things stand now, I like…
Zero, Dormammu, Hsien-ko, Sentinel, Amaterasu, and Hulk in that order. I’m probably going to start looking at Tron Bonne soon. I also like Dante, but he feels really complicated.
Is it possible to mash to reduce the dizzy / stun time of the Bonsai tree and / or the star? Despite the lack of speed Hsien-ko has, if you sj at the stunned opponent right away, they’ll still be stunned when you land on them with a heavy attack even from full screen if they can’t mash out [I checked, I own the game…].
Hey, good to see someone else from the crew is repping hsien ko. I need to watch those latest vids that Ed posted up.
anyways, Hsien ko stuff.
Overhead 236H seems decent. We need to figure out which characters that can hit crouching. Pretty sure it would work on sentinel, but what about tron? Hulk? Seems like an awesome idea to just throw it out in a blockstring like 2a2b236c and then KFC and go to work.
I’m really disappointed with the hitbox on her 6H. It feels like it doesn’t work as anti-air at all. The hitbox seems to extend forwards quite a ways and up hardly at all. I’ve had plenty of people who look like they were getting hit just glide over/through it and combo my sorry ass.
Also, landing an air combo S > land > 236AB is only possible on some of the cast. I’m pretty sure I’ve confirmed (through multiple whiffings) that it just doesn’t connect on Trish, for starters. You can still dash up Tenraiha, but that doesn’t work half as well for setting up super armor tag outs.
Anyways, I’m about to hit the lab, maybe I’ll have something more positive to post up later.
Pretty sure all dizzy effects are unmashable.
Stop using j.H!
So there are three general distances that you can be at after a midscreen aircombo, and it depends on what aircombo you used (and also slight differences based on the height you did the aircombo but mostly negligible.) I don’t know why it works this way but that’s how it is.
-
j:m: j:m: j:h: j:s:
–It doesn’t seem to matter how many hits of the j.H you get, even if you cancel it into j.S after 1 hit you still seem to land at the same distance.
–You land fairly far but you have time to dash up Tenraiha. If you go straight into Chireitou from this aircombo, you often miss the first hit. -
j:m: j:m: j:s:
–You land closer than the above combo, but you land later, so you don’t have time to dash up. This means less of the Tenraiha spike balls will probably hit, but the first hit of Chireitou will always connect (yes, it works on Trish.) -
any aircombo involving gong - example: j:m: j:m: :rdp::l: j:l: j:s:
–The damage of gong aircombos is better, but unless they’re cornered you land a mile away and have no chance at followups. I think this happens because the gong stops your forward momentum, so you just plop straight down when you do the j.S.
So, aircombo 1 is slightly better when you want to just do Tenraiha, or you want to connect Tenraiha into Chireitou (not possible at the range of aircombo 2) but if you want to go straight to Chireitou, aircombo 2 is better. Aircombo 2 also adds less scaling (no multihit j.H) so it’s usually better if you want to DHC to anything that doesn’t require pointblank range.
Is it just me or do Hsien’s supers suck in terms of damage?
Tenraiha is kind of below average. Chireitou is one of the more damaging hypers in the game when you land all the hits.
Edit: meant “level 1 hypers” in place of “hypers”.
It’s not you; her damage output is actually below average. Which, again, is odd considering that she is neither fast nor bulky (?) enough to take many hits, the latter of which makes sense because she was pretty frail in VS but had better speed and damage output to make up for it. Is she supposed to be played as a sort of mixup Dhalsim here?
Well, that’s good to hear.
I’m sure we’ll adapt to her movement over time. Hell, the game’s only been out for a little over a week, so there’s room for the good folks over here to experiment with her.
Can Tenrai Ha OTG and juggle the opponent with the balls like in VS? I was a little disappointed to find that the anvil slam doesn’t knock the opponent down if it doesn’t hit them directly, but then again, hypers freeze gameplay when starting up, so I’m not sure if that’d be broken or not.
Can’t wait to try out some Teleport Dash+Tenrai Ha corner shenanigans in the corner after an Air Combo like mentioned above, though.
Hsien-Ko’s unblockable setup?
236H > 2H > 5S > j.MMS > etc.
Did some more experimenting on that, and the way the balls fall from Tenrai Ha is almost as key to this as trying to constantly pull out a stun item with Anki Hou. If any of the balls strike later in the combo, like a rogue last hit, then it’s possible to go and toss in a cr.:l: or cr.
after and chain back into the magic series. It’s really inconsistent though, but I got it to work a bit more if the anvil strikes either at the very edge of the opponent’s front or behind.
Interestingly enough, doing Tenrai ha immediately after a launch changes up some of the hitbox and ball properties it seems. I’ll look into it more when I get back.
What does work better is using a slow OTG assist like Akuma’s Demonflip kick and then using Tenrai ha. If things work out just right, then you should be able have enough time to start a crouching series on them again. Tenrai ha’s balls also keep them in a constant OTG comboable state, so I’ve been able to DHC it to Task’s Legion of Arrows for a full hit consistently. Kinda wanna test if she can do more and increase her lackluster damage.
Im a zombie phoenix
[media=youtube]IEmAXKCPhkw[/media]
Hey guys, I was messing around in practice mode today and discovered an infinite loop with Hsien-Ko vs big characters (only tried it on Sentinel and Hulk so far)
Is this common knowledge? If not then I’ll make a vid and post it
post it!
Go ahead! Anything to help out our dead girl.
Also, it may be too early to say, but do you think Shuma will make for a good partner for Hsien? He seems to be fairly speedy (somehow) and has nice range on his attacks, but I don’t know anything about how he plays except from the gameplay video spread around yesterday, which only had basic gameplay to show off his moves. He looks like a slippery little bastard, something Hsien-Ko (and Tron, who is also on my team) lacks, aside from her teleport and airdash stuff.
And does anyone have a clear idea what matchups are good/bad for her? Rushdown can obviously give her trouble, but I’m having problems getting in on strong zoners like Dormammu sometimes as well.
have you guys found any solid use for her bad wavedash?
her back wave dash isn’t bad at all, but her towards one is awkward and slow.
I think it’s hard to say anything about matchups without speaking of the rest of the team. I assume my experience is different from someone who doesn’t use Doom with her. I don’t think rushdown is necessarily more of a problem to deal with than it is for other characters after getting a hang of her normals. If you can be confident in keeping momentum with aggressive zoning, you’re less susceptible to being rushed down yourself, and things generally are more successful. Playing defensively seems not to be a sustainable strategy with Hsien-ko.
I say that because after both players build up meter, a Hsien-ko who stays away from the opponent loses her advantage because while she can fight most projectile zoners, she doesn’t have a long-range hyper like most of them do, and you reach a point where they gain a decisive advantage in the ability to cancel their projectile into that hyper on reaction if they saw that you fired a gong and start the DHC pain train. Even Hulk has a better full-screen game.
Yeah, there are things you can do to deal with that tactic, as far as movement and assists go, or using a lower gong strength with faster recovery that might leave you able to block in time. M gong still has a decent duration and the difference in punishability compared to H is not trivial. Especially against characters like Ryu and Akuma it’s probably not worth using H gong, L has more range than it looks and between that and M gong it’s usually enough to deal with hadokens unless they’re running heavy assist cover. But chip damage from hypers is still somewhat significant, and she’s definitely designed to work at mid to close range where she can punish things better with pokes and threaten with H item throw, hopefully pushing them gradually to the corner. If you have to give up ground you know things aren’t going well.
I think there are a couple matchups where her focus can shift to keepaway. Wesker with a good projectile assist is difficult to fight on the ground. Without the assist you could not use any gongs and be aggressive, since he loses a lot of speed if he can’t teleport to punish something. But with the assist he gains the ability to cross you up at mid range while you’re locked down by the assist, then start his offensive strings and build meter, which is what he really wants. So the best thing to do is probably either to force him to block something (doom missiles) and pressure him, or play a jumpy, long-range runaway game.
Wesker’s teleports are entirely relative to his own position, and only one of them moves forward significantly, so if you know the range of that teleport, you can stay comfortably outside it until he tries to close the distance, at which point you can push forward behind the gongs you already had out. Superjumping when you expect a teleport is also probably not a bad idea, the assists that Wesker uses generally only hit at ground level and it gives you the opportunity to re-establish long range. Using this or a normal-jump pendulum (also punishes teleport attempts) to switch sides can frustrate his attempts to get in and build meter. His only significant long range options are the single gunshots and Maximum Wesker, which is kind of a waste of meter especially when blocked.
Dormammu would probably be a bad matchup if there is one. Unlike other projectile characters, the gong does very little, which means you have to rely on her movement and assists to get closer. She’s not the fastest as far as avoiding his spells, and he also tends to be brought in after the enemy built a good amount of meter, which means you have to deal with Stalking Flare and easy confirms into Chaotic Flame. On the plus side, you can use pendulum to attack while avoiding his flame carpet. All in all, that move is more effective against him than it is against most characters, so doing super armor pendulum on point might be the best approach to fighting him?
Wow, good, informative post R-D. Thanks for typing that up.
Yeah, I’m using Hidden Missiles to cover my approaches, as both Tron and Hsien have slow ground mobility, though Tron has her drill to get her around. I’ve been pretty successful with it against those who try to run up to Hsien (i.e., the numerous online Dantes). Gong also helps with my approaches, as it creates a nice little wall for her to run behind, but I need to practice pulling it off consistently. Pendulum can also mess up teleporters, but I obviously need to predict the teleports beforehand. I love the range on her normals and have been practicing BnB’s with her, but I’m still getting used to how slow they seem to come out compared to VS (a lv.1 X-Factor in training mode seems to replicate her VS speed; feels good man).
Storm and Dorm give me a lot of trouble, and I usually just switch out when faced with them as the Gong doesn’t cancel out a lot of their projectiles (namely Dark Hole and Purification). Super Jumping into DFPendulum seems like a nice strategy, though; I’ll try it out whenever I get the chance to. It’s probably not as effective over the course of a fight, however, as Hsien’ll be taking a lot of damage from plowing through projectiles.
All in all, I’m just going to need more practice. I’m still adjusting to Doom (and willing to try out Shuma when he’s released, as they both provdie me with a strong ranged game, or so I think Shuma will), and I don’t get to play as often as I’d like due to that other place we all know and love known as “the real world.”
Her backdash is pretty solid, but wavedashing with the teleport seems pretty null since it starts up kind of slowly. I just use her normal teleport dash to mess with people and set up Tenrai Ha’s after air combos and the like.
vs Wesker you shouldnt throw many gongs or items, try to fight him with your normals, because you outrange him. Just use the gong when they feel like using the gun, but again, the gong is not terribly useful vs wesker.If you see any teleport, jump. if he throws an assist like sent and teleports, super jump and GTFO.
IMO with hsienko, the hardest part is to learn how to zone/rush each character, for example, you can beat most proyectiles, so characters like sentinel cant zone you effectively so they gotta get in, then there’s the example of Wesker I just gave.
So, Tl;dr: you need to attack each char’s weaknesses with hsienko, she has the tools to do it.
I’m finding (and I kind of suspected it) that Hsien-Ko requires an entirely different mentality than almost any other character in the game. While she’s not particularly great at either short or long range, rush-down or keep-away, she’s actually very, very good at one thing: annoyance. She can sit at just the right range to totally shut down either rushers or zoners.
Now, people may argue that you can’t win by annoying your opponent, but I have to say I don’t agree. Throwing someone off their usual gameplan is a huge advantage. What I’ve been doing is running her on point (no, really), with Dormammu in second, and the third character being flexible (often Hulk or Taskmaster). She can get a good feel for what the opponent plans to do, while at the same time really screwing them up with gongs, pendulums, tp-dashes, and the like. By the time she’s ready to tag out, she’s usually stored up a lot of meter for Dorm to use, so she can Dark Force DHC out for her great assist.
I think the important thing for the above is to make sure your other two characters are big-damage characters, to compensate for her relatively lower damage-dealing ability.
Some matches from Arcade Infinity:
YouTube - Gorehounnd’s Channel
Clockwork is in a handful of these videos running Hsien-Ko/Doom/Phoenix. He’s the only notable player I’ve seen so far getting mileage out of Hsien-Ko on point (and without any meter to boot), so it’s worth watching.
EDIT: Also, I was bored earlier and decided to cap [media=youtube]EUEubybsLIs[/media] for lulz.